Today -100: April 13, 1922: Out of the fire

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is acquitted in his third trial. The jury deliberated for about a minute and also came back with a statement that the trial was “a great injustice” against Fatty, against whom, they say, there was no evidence whatsoever. It’s unclear who actually wrote the statement for them, as they weren’t out long enough to have written it themselves. The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation announces it will release a new Arbuckle picture and... see how it goes from there.

Puerto Rico District Attorney R. Diaz Collazo refuses Gov. E. Mont Reily’s order to leave his post, saying his dismissal is illegal. So Reily has him thrown out of his office by the cops. So subtle.

Russians’ right to own personal automobiles is restored.

Roberta Birmingham files papers to run for justice of the peace in St. Joseph, Missouri. She promises not to marry during her term of office. Miss Birmingham, a clerk in the justice’s office, “is called one of the prettiest women in the Court House.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 12, 1922: Of firings, conferences, and bonuses

Puerto Rican Gov. E. Mont Reily fires the district attorney, R. Diaz Collazo, who the grand jury just directed to indict him. Subtle.

The archbishop of Dublin and the lord mayor of Dublin call a peace conference, with Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera. 

Russian Foreign Minister Georgy Tchitcherin objects to the presence at the Genoa Conference of Japan, which is occupying part of Siberia, and Romania, which is occupying Bessarabia. France and Belgium object to Germany and Russia being on the principle committee. 

NY passes a $1 million bonus bill, giving a max of $250, in monthly instalments, to wounded veterans unemployed more than 14 days.

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Today -100: April 11, 1922: Europe needs quiet

Germany rejects the Reparations Commission’s demand for Allied control of German finances and massive new taxes.

The US Supreme Court rules that citizens of Puerto Rico do not have a 6th Amendment right to trial by jury for misdemeanors. Chief Justice William Howard Taft says, “Puerto Rico belongs to the United States, but is not part of the United States. Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory and even though Puerto Ricans have American citizenship, they do not have the same rights as the common American citizen.” Since the case was one of criminal libel, this effectively means that Puerto Rico doesn’t have 1st Amendment protections either. The Biden Administration continues to rely on this and the other Insular Cases in claiming that US possessions are not strictly part of the United States and their residents have only those rights specifically given them. A 2020 Circuit Court case, for example, ruled that goods arriving in the US Virgin Islands could be searched without a warrant.

A Puerto Rican grand jury calls for indictments against Gov. E. Mont Reily, his secretary, and an auditor, for misappropriation of funds.

At the Genoa Conference, everyone is talking about Russian Foreign Minister Georgy Tchitcherin’s silk top hat. There were long debates back home over whether he should wear this bourgeois affectation, but he was ordered – ordered! – to buy one (in Berlin along the way to Genoa) and wear it. Then he mislaid it at the border with Austria and had his train stopped while a courier was sent to retrieve it. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

Lloyd George makes a speech at the conference that doesn’t even mention the hat. “There is no real peace in Europe,” he says. “Fighting has ceased, but snarling goes on, and as there are many dogs in every country who imagine that the louder they bark and the longer they bark the deeper impression they make of their ferocity, Europe is deafened with this canine clamor. It is undignified, it is distracting, it destroys confidence. It wrecks the nerves of a nerve-racked continent, and we shall make a real contribution to the restoration of Europe if at this conference we can stop that snarling. Europe needs quiet. We can get peace if we act together, but not if we act in a spirit of greedy vigilance over selfish interests.” French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, who may have recognized himself in that last bit, says: “The French delegation will never pronounce one word of hate. It desires no one’s humiliation. ... It is inspired by good faith and good will.” FACT CHECK: No it isn’t.

NYC Police Commissioner Richard Enright calls up the police reserves “as emergency attack on the alleged crime wave which he says does not exist.” The 75 motorcycle cops normally used to halt speeders will patrol the streets at night. Enright asks the public to lend cars and horses to the cops.

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Today -100: April 10, 1922: Is it by civil war and the shedding of the blood of our brothers that we can win peace and freedom?

Michael Collins warns, “Is it by civil war and the shedding of the blood of our brothers that we can win peace and freedom?” That’s a trick question, right? “That is the language of treason, not patriotism.” If there is a civil war, as he says looks likely unless there is “an immediate change in tone and tactics” – and he’s lookin’ at you, De Valera – the British will return.

The IRA attempt to wreck a train they wrongly believe Collins is on.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (both great, as Alan Sherman said) is in the US, lecturing (sigh) on spiritualism. He says he’s personally spoken with 20 ghosts.

The Countess Markievicz is also lecturing in the US, attempting to drum up support for the Irish Republic and against the Treaty. I wonder if she and Doyle came over on the same ship. That would have been awkward.

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Today -100: April 9, 1922: Of the big five, bobbed hair, anti-Semitic bombs, and gerrymanders

Russia is moving away from the idea of making major concessions at the Genoa conference. Russia’s “big five” leaders aren’t attending, including Commissar for Labor and Peasant Inspection Stalin who, although he was made general secretary of the Communist Party last week, is mentioned for what I believe is the first ever time in the NYT today.

The Philadelphia Board of Education says teachers won’t be fired for bobbing their hair.

A bomb that exploded at a dinner in Budapest of the Liberal Party last week which killed 8 was probably an anti-Semitic thing.

The NY Legislature’s reapportionment map for congressional seats carves out a Republican seat in lower Manhattan, where there should be no Republican seat, but my question is... what reapportionment? With Congress having given up on national reapportionment for this decade, it hadn’t occurred to me that state legislatures might still go ahead with their own. Oddly, they’re using the 1910 census as their basis.

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Today -100: April 8, 1922: Guns and automobiles, the American dream

After gangsters from NY were found to be buying guns in New Jersey, the NJ Legislature attempted to pass a law requiring gun permits, but somehow during the legislative process wound up passing one making it easier to get a gun, as is the custom. So now anyone who owns a car or other vehicle can purchase a gun without a permit.

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Today -100: April 7, 1922: Of brigands, boycotts, and bosses

Grigory Semyonov, the Ataman of the Cossacks, is arrested at Penn Station, not for the massacres he was responsible for during the Russian Civil War, but because of a civil action brought by one of the trading companies he stole from back in Siberia. He says he has immunity because his actions were supported by the Allies; they say he was nothing more than a brigand. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Also, we don’t use the word brigand enough these days.

The rebel IRA are searching trains to enforce their boycott on goods from Northern Ireland.

Former NY governor Al Smith meets with Tammany’s Boss Murphy, evidently to deny the rumors that he’ll be running for governor again this year. He says he will stay in the trucking business. Tammany is especially worried that William Randolph Hearst might try to run.

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Today -100: April 6, 1922: I left my heart...

The House of Representatives votes 222-73 for a bill to deport aliens convicted of violating federal or state Prohibition laws.

The IRA seize Lenaboy Castle in Galway. Wondering how big a deal this was, I googled “how many castles are there in Ireland.” 30,000! Lenaboy Castle was used by the Black and Tans to torture and murder prisoners and later as an orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy, and may or may not have a secret burial site for all the babies the nuns mercied to death.

The former heart of the former emperor Charles of Austria-Hungary is removed to be sent (in a glass jar in a silver coffin, if you’re wondering how royal hearts are transported) for burial in Austria, while the rest of his body will be buried in Hungary, authorities permitting. Hungary seizes newspapers that published the Legitimists’ proclamation that 10-year-old Otto is now king of Hungary.

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Today -100: April 5, 1922: Of guns, crappy feminists, and half drachmae

25,000 pistol permits have been issued in NYC since the beginning of the year. Wall Street bankers and brokers are arming to the hilt, fearing stickups, which have been on the rise. The cost of a permit recently increased to $1.50.

All members of an all-women ticket for municipal offices in Altus, Arkansas are disqualified for failure to pay poll tax, which they didn’t realize was required for office (were they also not planning to vote for themselves?). They blame men, presumably the male candidates who took office unopposed, for failing to inform them of the law.

The Greek government, short of money for its endless war with Turkey, proposes a forced loan requiring everyone with paper currency to lend half of it to the government. Literally: each drachma banknote would be cut in half, with the left half be exchanged for a government bond and the right half worth half as much as the original.

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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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