Today -100: April 4, 1922: Relatively snubbed

Albert Einstein has been lecturing in Paris, but cancels an engagement at the Academy of Sciences since some members planned to protest his appearance by standing up and leaving. What is their objection? Do they reject the theory of relativity or Einstein personally for being a German, or a Jew? The NYT does not inform us. He can lecture in French and has done this week, so it’s not that.

(Update: a general who is one of those who pledged to protest says it’s because Germany is not in the League of Nations.)

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Today -100: April 3, 1922: Of parades, cannibals, and ottos

Rebel IRA troops parade in Dublin. Thousands of them take an oath of non-allegiance to the Dáil Éireann. 

More claims of starving people resorting to cannibalism, this time in Armenia.

The Hungarian government declares a day of national mourning for deceased former emperor/king/putschist Charles. Austria does not. Monarchists in Hungary are taking heart from the fact that while the Allies forced Charles to abdicate last year, they forgot to do the same for former empress Zita, so if the monarchy were restored she could act as regent until Otto comes of age in 8 years. Monarchist deputies plan to move legislation to bring Otto to Hungary so he can be educated by Hungarian teachers.

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Today -100: April 2, 1922: Of strikes, red armies, and dead emperors

The coal miners’ strike shuts down most mines in the US and Canada. So far, only one scab shot. Actually, it turns out that April 1, the start of the strike, is also traditionally a day coal miners take off anyway to celebrate the winning of the 8-hour day in 1898.

Lloyd George will, reportedly, suggest to the Soviets at the Genoa Conference that the Red Army be cut in half, and then cut further in stages, in exchange for a promise that no one will attack Russian territory for 10 years. However, this is part of LG’s plan for a general European disarmament, which would be strongly resisted by France. Also, Russia is still fighting a civil war.

Charles I, former Austro-Hungarian Emperor, dies of pneumonia in Madeira, where he was exiled last year after twice attempting coups in Hungary. He was 34. The former empress Zita is pregnant. The NYT snidely describes the Habsburgs as being as intelligent as the Jukes family (a NY family studied for their criminality and used by eugenicists as a prime example of the need for sterilization) and says Charles had “delusions of grandeur” and was “merely a few centuries behind the times.”

Senator (and former Texas governor) Charles Culberson calls on Texas authorities to shut down the Ku Klux Klan, saying otherwise it will “usurp the functions of the State and be destructive of government itself.” Culberson will lose his bid for a 4th senate term this year, defeated in the Democratic primary by Earle Mayfield, an actual (probable) klansman.

Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach dies at 37. Make of that what you will.

The NYT has started printing daily radio schedules, This is for Sunday, so the programs are rather religion-heavy.

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Today -100: April 1, 1922: Of strikes, mules, radio, choleric chickens, and Siamese twins

The great coal miners’ strike against wage cuts begins. As mines shut down, mules are brought out, many experiencing sunlight and fresh air for the first time in years.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Parliament ratifies the Irish treaty.

Both parties plan to use radio-telephone service to deliver speeches to distant constituents during this year’s congressional elections. Some congresscritters are already making use of the Navy’s radio service. And by “some,” I mean only Republicans have been allowed to do so.

Some of the chickens which Germany sent to France as part of reparations died, evidently of cholera. Le Matin is sure that Germany inoculated the chickens with the disease to spread it to French humans.

Siamese twins, Rosa and Josefa Blazek, died a couple of days ago, 12 minutes apart, after their brother refused surgery that might have saved one of them (the autopsy shows it wouldn’t have). The 44-year-old twins had been exhibited since they were 13. Rosa leaves an 11-year-old son Franz, father unknown, and the Chicago courts dealing with the twins’ rather large estate must decide if they counted as separate people – it sounds an awful like the court will have to determine if they had one or two souls. If the former, Franz inherits everything, if the latter Josefa’s money would be divided among her relatives, including the brother who decided against separation. (Update: actually, it turns out they only left $400, not the $200,000 this article claimed). It’s unknown what happened to Franz, who may have actually not been Rosa’s son at all, but adopted to revitalize their act.

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Today -100: March 31, 1922: Let’s just throw the ship out and buy a new one

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: March 30, 1922: Of treaties, radio umbrellas, and annulments

The Senate ratifies the naval limitation treaty and the treaty limiting submarines and poison gas, the former by 74-1, the latter unanimously.

A French inventor, unnamed in the story, hopes to invent a parasol/radio receiver.

NY Gov. Nathan Miller signs a bill removing the absolute right of annulment for a marriage entered into by someone under 18. And another bill firing teachers who are not citizens unless they are taking steps to become citizens. 

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Today -100: March 29, 1922: I make it a policy in my administration never to interfere with the ladies

Pres. Harding plans to stay out of the 1922 congressional elections entirely.

Yup, the NYC ordinance against women smoking that the police started enforcing yesterday definitely does not exist. A clerk sent Police Commissioner Richard Enright a draft ordinance without noticing that the aldermen had voted it down. “It looked authentic,” Enright says, although it wasn’t actually signed by the mayor. Mayor Hylan says “I make it a policy in my administration never to interfere with the ladies – for they will do as they please anyway.” The ladies were pretty pissed by the supposed ordinance and increased their smoking in restaurants in response.

Northern Irish PM Sir James Craig responds to Michael Collins’ accusation that he was breaking the agreement that Catholics in Ulster not be fired or, you know, killed, by saying that it’s Collins breaking his word and the South is sending armed men to create unrest in the North. They both have a point.

The prosecution rests in the 3rd Fatty Arbuckle trial, which is getting waaaay less coverage in the NYT and elsewhere than the first two. There’s a surprise witness, a secretary at the sanitarium where Virginia Rappe died, who has come forward suspiciously late in the game to relate that right before dying Rappe gave a complete account to her, blaming Arbuckle.

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Today -100: March 28, 1922: In which it is revealed what menaces the morals of young girls

NYC Police Commissioner Richard Enright orders cops to crack down on restaurants, hotels or places of public entertainment which permit women to smoke, based on an ordinance passed 2 weeks ago and signed by Mayor Hylan. Which is a surprise to the aldermen who supposedly passed this ordinance, although Alderman Peter McGuinness insists it was passed. It was not in fact passed; the cops are enforcing a non-existent law. When he introduced the proposed ban, McGuinness said, “The morals of our young girls are menaced by this cigarette smoking. ... young fellows go into our restaurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes. What happens? The young fellows lose all respect for women and the next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women. It’s all wrong and I say it’s got to stop.”

30,000 Fascists march in Milan to celebrate the 3rd anniversary of the founding of the Fascist Party. One Communist is killed in a clash, as was the custom.

An assassination attempt on former Russian foreign minister Pavel Milyukov in Berlin goes awry, the bullet instead killing former secretary of state Vladimir Nabokov, father of the novelist.

Several women are running for Congress this year, including Ellen Duance Davis, the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, and two sisters,  Irene Cleveland Buell, city prosecutor of Ashland, Nebraska, and Mrs. A.K. Gault, mayor of St. Peter, Minnesota. Their mother was a cousin of Grover Cleveland.

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Today -100: March 27, 1922: Human needs are overlooked

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, blames the forthcoming coal strike on financiers who manipulated the profits of the industry, whose operators then demanded wage cuts based on the manipulated data. He says when purely financial interests control an industry, “human needs are overlooked in the race for a balance sheet showing.”

2/3 of the Fiume Constituent Assembly ousted by Fascist raiders are hiding out and holding sessions in Yugoslavia. Fiume is occupied by the Italian military, which bans anyone wearing uniforms except those of the Italian Army.

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Today -100: March 26, 1922: Let’s head to the river with a long straw

Although federal Prohibition Director Roy Haynes ordered agents not to make ostentatious displays of destroying seized liquor, the Chicago director orders 350,000 gallons of alcohol dumped into the Chicago River.

Parisian restaurants will no longer have orchestras, because the tax man classifies restaurants with music as places of amusement, subject to a 25% luxury tax and a new extra 13% public assistance tax.

The Post Office explains that there is no risk of catching typhus from mail sent from Russia.

Helicopter technology is really coming along. Pateras Pescara’s chopper rises 6 feet into the air.

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Today -100: March 25, 1922: Be vewwy, vewwy quiet, I’m hunting plesiosaurs

Headline of the Day -100:  

The director of the Buenos Aires Zoological Garden, who authorized the expedition, says “I am laughed at, but I am convinced that some large, strange animals exist in Patagonia.” 

The US Senate ratifies the Four-Power Treaty, 67-27.

Former federal Prohibition Director for Pennsylvania William McConnell and some of his associates are indicted for issuing fraudulent permits to withdraw liquor from bond to bootleggers – 700,000 gallons during his 70 days in charge last August to October.

The NYT op-ed page suggests it was not “a real kindness” for Rep. Ansorge to name a black man to take the Annapolis entrance exams, because he would not be welcomed by racist cadets. “Race prejudice in the United States is a mountain that reason and moral indignation cannot remove.” So why even try?

Ford Motors will establish a 40-hour week. Edsel Ford says men need more time with their families.

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Today -100: March 24, 1922: Of subs, bonuses, cadets, and death penalties

A British submarine collides with a destroyer in the Mediterranean during a training exercise and goes down, with all 24 crew lost.

The Bonus Bill passes the House, 333 to 70.

Emile Holley is named by Rep. Martin Ansorge (R-Harlem, NY) as a candidate for the entrance exams at Annapolis, the first black man since the 1870s if he succeeds (he will not).

The Northern Irish Parliament extends the death penalty to bomb-throwing, and the attorney general is thinking about also applying it to carrying firearms without a permit.

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Today -100: March 23, 1922: You can call it what you like

Oklahoma Gov. J. B. Robertson (D) is arrested for taking bribes to allow an insolvent bank, the Guaranty State Bank of Okmulgee, to continue operating, as are a bunch of officials of several bankrupt banks and the former state banking commissioner.

Anti-Treaty IRAers will hold a convention to renounce the authority of the Dáil Éireann and the government. Commandant Roderick “Rory” O’Connor, announcing this to the press, is asked if this means a military dictatorship. “You can call it what you like,” he says. “[T]he rank and file is always right. It is the leaders who have failed.” Pres. Arthur Griffin bans the convention, for all the good that will do.

Constable Charles Hamby will run for sheriff of Travis County, Texas (which includes Austin) on an anti-KKK platform against incumbent Sheriff W.D. Miller, a Kluxer.

Mayor George Oles of Youngstown, a wacky grocer who ran as a joke promising, among other things, to permit spooning in public parks, rescinds his order that the police salute him, because he spent so much time saluting back that he didn’t have time for anything else.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: March 22, 1922: Of secret agreements, floggings, failed banks, dictated convictions, and Saxon laws

Harding is pissed at Congress for not doing his bidding after it voted to reduce the army and navy below the level he wants, specified troop levels for Hawaii and the Panama Canal Zone, which he considers his sole prerogative, and will be voting for the veterans’ bonus. But since he ran on reestablishing “normalcy” after the “dictatorship” of Woodrow Wilson, he can’t be seen telling Congress what to do, so he has to seethe quietly and, presumably, leak to the press that he’s seething quietly.

The White House and State Dept deny that there is a secret US-UK anti-Japan agreement.

The Dallas KKK insists they weren’t the masked men who flogged a lumberman, and even offer a reward.

The Okmulgee County, Oklahoma grand jury indicts a bunch of people for bank failures, but their names have not yet been made public.....

South African PM Jan Smuts says the white miners’ strike was aimed at setting up a soviet republic.

50 congresscritters petition Harding for the release of prisoners convicted during the war under the Espionage Act only for expressions of opinion. More than 2/3 of the signers are Republicans.

The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals reverses the death sentence on Harry Lattimar in Mingo County, as “the mob has dictated this conviction.” Lattimar, presumably a black man, was convicted of assault on an 8-year-old white girl.

The UMW calls for a strike at coal mines in the US and Canada next week.

In England, Mrs. Owen Peel is acquitted of betting fraud under a very old Saxon law which presumes that if a woman commits a crime in the presence of her husband she was under his power. The case stirs some outrage, and Lady Astor introduces a bill to repeal the law.

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Today -100: March 21, 1922: Of border troubles and occupations

The IRA makes incursions across the border they don’t acknowledge into Northern Ireland. There’s a lot of sniping, machine gun fire, etc. at the border.

Harding orders US occupation troops on the Rhine (currently 4,000 of them) home by July 1st. This coming right after the Allies failed to accede to the US demand for compensation to cover the cost of occupation is completely coincidental, says Secretary of War John Weeks.

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Today -100: March 20, 1922: Of inflation and KKKidnappings

The Reparation Commission will demand that Germany stop printing so much damned money. In exchange, this year’s reparation payments would be reduced.

The Toronto black community, as well as the police, are bodyguarding Matthew Bullock, the black man Canada refused to extradite to North Carolina, because of threats by the KKK to kidnap him.

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Today -100: March 19, 1922: Wading through blood

Gandhi is sentenced to 6 years for sedition.

Lord Peel, grandson of PM Robert Peel, is named the new Secretary of State for India. He knows jack shit about India, but he’s a viscount, so...

During the Irish election campaign, Éamon de Valera keeps speaking about the possibility of civil war, saying fighters for full independence may need to “wade through the blood of soldiers of the Irish Government, and perhaps through that of some members of the Irish Government, to meet their freedom.”

Colorado rejects the state KKK’s request for incorporation. The secretary of state says its stated purposes are too vague.

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Today -100: March 18, 1922: There is no sex in the quality of virtue

The Virginia Legislature passes a measure for film censorship. Thomas Dixon, author of The Clansman, speaks against the bill. Interestingly, the board of censors can ban obscenity, vulgarity, and elements likely to incite crime, but not sacrilege. 

A couple of days after the British arrested Kenyan nationalist Harry Thuku for sedition, protesters surround the Nairobi police station demanding his release. Police and white settlers fire into the crowd, killing 25 or more. After reading the Riot Act, of course, because there’s a right way to slaughter natives and a wrong way.

The article goes on to give a primer on Kenya, “land of great possibilities.” It notes that the natives are annoyed about agricultural wage cuts. See, the white settlers “depend entirely upon black labor for the cultivation of their estates, but the black man does not take kindly to work, so that problem is how to make him work.” The answer: forced labor, slavery if you will. 

Italy will send troops to occupy Fiume in order to establish a proper government there after the coup and certainly not to annex it, perish the thought.

Headline of the Day -100:  

This is Frederick MacMonnies’s statue/fountain Civic Virtue, discussed here 2 days ago. The sculptor, who plans not to attend the “art inquisition,” says the sculpture’s just a fucking allegory; “There is no sex in the quality of virtue,” which he just happened to portray as a guy with his dick out standing over some women with snake tails.

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Today -100: March 17, 1922: Of kings, strikes, and male citizens

The German Reichstag removes illegitimate motherhood as grounds for dismissal from government work.

Egyptian Sultan Ahmed Fuad Pasa celebrates Egyptian (semi-)independence by changing his title to king, which to my ears sounds like a demotion but evidently not to his.

The New Jersey Legislature overrides Gov. Edward Edwards’s veto of the prohibition bill. However the attempt to override of another of  the bills sponsored by the Anti-Saloon League and vetoed by Edwards, banning curtains on the windows of pool halls and other places where beverages are served, fails by a single vote.

The South African Industrial Federation calls off the miners’ strike. The government has been claiming the whole thing is a Bolshevik plot, which it is not. The government now has 6,000 prisoners.

The Iowa attorney general stops Bessie Farnsworth running for the lower house of the state legislature because the state constitution says only “male citizens” are eligible. So she may run for the state senate, for which there are different qualifications.

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Today -100: March 16, 1922: Order shall reign

Éamon de Valera forms the Republican Association (Cumann na Poblachta), which will seek international recognition of the Irish Republic and which repudiates the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Last month the New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated the state’s dry laws. Gov. Edward “Edward” Edwards, who ran as a wet, vetoes the Legislature’s attempt to replace those laws with more constitutional ones copied from the federal Volstead Act and this time including jury trials. Edwards says enforcement should be left to the federal government. 

Italian Prime Minister Luigi Facta tells Parliament that his government will restore order, acting impartially between the factions. “Order shall reign,” he predicts. It will, but not in the way he thinks.

South African troops occupy Fordsburg, near Johannesburg. Leaflets were dropped warning women and children to leave before the bombardment began.

An anti-Ku Klux Klan organization is formed in Oklahoma, called the Knights of the Visible Empire.

Isaiah Moore, indicted in Indianapolis for 12 counts of bigamy (he was arrested right before he was due to get married again and immediately started confessing, although he can’t remember the last names of all of the women he married), as well as grand larceny and embezzlement, says he’d like to become an evangelist when he gets out of prison. Of course he does.

There are protests over Frederick MacMonnies’s statue/fountain Civic Virtue, soon to be installed in front of NY City Hall in Manhattan.

The nekked dude is Civic Virtue, standing on two female figures with snake tails representing Vice and Corruption, which some criticize as sexist, like Mary Garrett Hay of the League of Women Voters, who says that in this age, woman should be placed not below man, but side by side with him in any representation of civic virtue. Such attacks and protests continued over the decades, including by (ahem) Anthony Weiner. Mayor LaGuardia hated the statue, which he called Fat Boy, and seized on the opening of Queens Borough Hall in 1941 to send it over as a gift. In 2012, after Queens let the marble deteriorate for 70 years, it was sent to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

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