Today -100: May 14, 1922: Of decent burials, protectorates, and polo balls

Emile Holley, or possibly Emil Holly, depending on which NYT story you read, the black man appointed for admission to Annapolis by Rep. Martin Ansorge (R-Harlem, NY), fails the mental tests (this probably means IQ tests), which isn’t suspicious at all, although the grading is supposedly anonymous.

I’ve been meaning to praise NYT correspondent Edwin James’s prose in his opinionated reporting from Genoa. Today: “Today was spent arranging the funeral of the Genoa conference. Having seen it fail almost beyond their fondest hopes, the French appear unwilling to see it have a decent burial.” Lloyd George wants an international commission to study reconstruction in Russia as a way to get something out of the conference, but France objects to Russia being included on the commission, although obviously Russia would reject a commission on Russia with no Russians.

The League of Nations Council agrees to establish a protectorate over Albania, since no country is willing to take up the burden.

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Today -100: May 13, 1922: There’s unseemliness, and then there’s golf buddies

Although Harding said he’d stay entirely out of primaries, because endorsing candidates would be “unseemly,” he endorses Sen. Joseph Frelinghuysen (NJ), with whom he often plays golf.

Chicago police raid a bomb factory supplying trade union “sluggers.” They’re getting some prisoners to “confess” because, well, Chicago.

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Today -100: May 12, 1922: In times of war

Russia rejects the conditions the other countries at Genoa are trying to impose on them in return for resumed commercial relations but without the huge loan that Russia’s been demanding. Those conditions amounted to ending socialism, and it’s still not clear to me if they thought Russia’s ending of private property was something it would really just give up. Russia is now withdrawing its previous agreement to pay the tsarist debts and compensate foreigners whose property was nationalized.

Illinois Gov. Len Small’s trial for corruption finally begins. When he was state treasurer, he “deposited” state funds in a bank which did not exist, depriving the state of interest while he actually invested the funds in packing company bonds.

The Chicago grand jury is called into a rush special session to head off habeas writs by indicting 8 leaders of trade unions and others for alleged incitement to the murders of those two cops. This is under the law used to execute anarchists after the Haymarket Riot of 1886 (none of whom had participated in the riot). The prosecutor says he has enough “evidence” to hang several of the arrestees. The lawyer for Cornelius “Con” Shea of the Theatrical Janitors’ Union (I assume they mop floors very dramatically) asks if the right of habeas corpus is to be abridged just because he is Con Shea; the judge says “In times of war – yes” (the judge thinks there’s a war on law n’ order).

The motion picture theatre owners of America ban any possible films starring Peggy Joyce, citing their opposition to “the exploitation on our screens” of all “such objectionable lines of conduct,” presumably referring to the former Ziegfeld girl’s loud and contentious divorce last year and her chaotic romantic life in general (some French guy may have just committed suicide because she threw him over) (by the time she died, she married 6 times, starting at 15 years old).

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Today -100: May 11, 1922: We’ll meet their gunplay with guns

In a Chicago labor dispute among glaziers, bombs explode at open-shop glass plants and two cops, a lieutenant and a patrolman, are shot dead by unionists. The police respond, as was the custom, by raiding every union headquarters in town and arresting over 200 union leaders or “hoodlums who pose around as labor leaders,” as Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris calls them. “We’ll meet their gunplay with guns,” he says, probably doing a Sean Connery impression.

NYC Mayor John Hylan, in his eternal grudge match with Gov. Nathan Miller, rejects the latter’s order that voting machines be used in the city’s elections. There are questions about how the Automatic Registering Machine Corporation got the contract for over-priced voting machines.

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Well, it’s certainly worth a try. 

Oh, they mean the mayor of Buffalo, New York, not an actual buffalo. He’s a brewer being tried for, you know, brewing. 

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Today -100: May 10, 1922: Peace, ain’t it grand

Poland and Germany finally come to an agreement over the division of Silesia. It includes free transit through Poland of goods between Germany and Russia.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty says the Wilson Administration actively concealed war-contract fraud cases.

Cuba just ended its role as a combatant in World War I. I don’t think anyone noticed they were still at war.

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Today -100: May 9, 1922: Of lynchings, quitting clerics, and cleared names

A fourth black man is lynched near Kirven, Texas, the brother of one of the men burned at the stake a few days ago.

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Today -100: May 8, 1922: Of kidnappings, and sudans

A British war veteran, Alec Robertson, accuses US Sen. Charles Culberson (D-Texas) of hiring the Burns Detective Agency to kidnap him after he tried to woo Mary, the senator’s daughter. Two private dicks pretended to be real cops, threatened him with arrest and tried to hustle him out of the country.

Newly independent Egypt decides it owns the Sudan. Britain disagrees.

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Today -100: May 7, 1922: Of domed teapots, lynchings, pictures of France as painted in Los Angeles, and hot thief chases

Suspicious senators disbelieve Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall’s claim that oil companies were draining oil from the Teapot Dome reserve in Wyoming, which is his stated reason why the reserve needed to be leased to Harry Sinclair before all the government oil was drained. Geologists, including the Wyoming state geologist, say the geo. structure of the formation, featuring a deep water line, actually makes it impossible for slant drills to siphon off its oil. Sen. John Kendrick (D-Wyoming and former governor) has been taking point on the Senate inquiry and notes that the Interior Dept lied last month when it said there was no lease, 6 days after it was signed.

Three black men are burned at the stake, one at a time, by a lynch mob in Kirven, Texas after a 17-year-old white girl, Eula Ausley, is sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. Supposedly the first, “Snap” Curry, confessed and implicated the other two, who refused to confess even under torture (and castration, according to some reports). It is now believed that Snap was actually rape-murdering with two white men from a family in a feud with the Ausleys, not with the other two lynched black men, Mose Jones and Johnny Cornish, who had nothing to do with it. The cops had arrested the white men and then let them go once they had enough blacks to blame the crime on. There’s a book on the events.

The Genoa Conference is widely believed to be about to fail. Everyone plans to blame Russia.

Some French newspapers are demanding the suppression of the Rex Ingram-directed, Rudolph Valentino-starring World War I film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because it puts too much emphasis on the American military role and depicts the German soldiers as “strong and splendid, though barbaric” (not sure where that quote comes from). Illustration complains “we are shown a picture of France as it is painted in Los Angeles.”

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Once again proving that silent films were actually documentaries.

And yes, yes, was it the chase that was hot, or the thief? We may never know.

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Today -100: May 6, 1922: Of paper money and portraits

Germany can’t print money fast enough to keep up with demand. That’s probably bad, right? They will introduce a 5,000 mark note, which is the equivalent of some money; the previous highest-denomination bank note was 1,000 marks.

Artist William Burton got a judgment against Claire Cornell, who refused to pay him for a portrait of her daughter Claire Jr. The judgment is reversed on appeal because the Appellate Division justices think the painting sucks. Experts testified on both sides about whether it looked anything like Claire. Art experts, not Claire experts.

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Today -100: May 5, 1922: Of non-aggression and truces

France rejects Lloyd George’s proposed non-aggression pact unless 1) every European nation signs, 2) Russia recognizes its current boundaries for the next 10 years, 3) France can act unilaterally to enforce the Versailles Treaty against Germany. Germany rejects these terms, saying only the Allies acting together have the right to enforce the treaty. And Russia rejects them, saying Romania has no right to occupy Bessarabia. Also, Russia will pay its war debts or it will compensate foreign owners of nationalized property, but it won’t do both, and it wants a large loan as a condition for doing either.

The Irish Free State and Republicans agree to a 96-hour truce.

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Today -100: May 4, 1922: Of truces and castles

The Dáil Éireann adopts a resolution by Éamon de Valera ordering both sides to arrange an immediate truce.

Irish Free State forces storm Ormonde Castle in Kilkenny.

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Today -100: May 3, 1922: Of compensation and unseemliness

At the Genoa Conference, the Allies have been working on formulating terms to present to Russia, but at the last minute French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré intervenes to order the French delegation not to sign, following Belgium’s decision to do the same. Belgium wants seized foreign-owned property in Russia returned, which would mean restoration of private property rights in Russia, instead of compensation or the 99-year leases which Lloyd George seems to think would sidestep Russia’s socialist ideals if they were, you know, looking for a loophole. Part of his plan is an arbitration panel with a member named by US Chief Justice Taft; don’t know if anyone asked whether the US or indeed Taft are willing to do this (OK, another article says Harding has expressed himself privately as extremely gratified). Anyway, the statement will be sent to the Russians without French or Belgian signatures.

After Pres. Harding meets Pennsylvania  Attorney General George Alter, who is running for governor, the White House insists Harding is not endorsing Alter in the primary, or indeed anyone in any Republican primary, because that would be “unseemly.”

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Today -100: May 2, 1922: Bornn white

Anti-treaty IRA rob several banks, explaining that they’re not being paid by the government, you know, the one they’re fighting. They leave receipts.

Mrs Ingrid Bornn is denied an annulment by the Queens Supreme Court, which she demanded on the grounds that her husband Jose Bornn has negro blood. The court rules that he doesn’t. 

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Today -100: May 1, 1922: As was the custom

The anti-Treaty IRA is stepping up attacks on police in the North and the south. There have been several murders of Protestants in the south, one of them around 80 years old, which have shocked the public.

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Today -100: April 30, 1922: Of partition and plunder, tea pots dome, and police radios

The final meeting of all the sides in (southern) Ireland fails to come to any peace agreement. De Valera rejects a proposal by Griffith and Collins for a referendum on the Anglo-Irish Treaty, I guess because it would only take place in southern Ireland, thus “ratifying” the “partition and plunder act of 1920.”

The Senate orders its Committee on Public Lands to investigate the Tea Pot Dome and Elk Hills oil leases. It will also investigate Interior Secretary Albert Fall’s (false) claim that the leases were necessary because oil companies owning fields next to the government oil fields have been siphoning oil from them.

Paris police cars are getting radios. Do they have the wee woo wee woo sirens yet?

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Today -100: April 29, 1922: Of sluiceways of corruption, spirit flappers, and corsets

Sen. Robert La Follette (R-Wisc.) calls the Interior Dept the “sluiceway for 90% of the corruption in this country.” (I’m not entirely sure that’s a 9). Sen. Miles Poindexter (R-Wash.) says the Naval Affairs Committee will probably investigate the lease of the naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome. La Follette says naval officers who protested the leases were transferred.

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Warlord v. warlord.

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The Chicago Corset Club, which, sadly, probably isn’t as kinky as it sounds, says only 5% of women wear corsets. How it came by this data is not disclosed.

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Today -100: April 28, 1922: I won’t be intimidated by any gunmen here

The Secret Service suggests Pres. Harding not take an excursion steamer to an event celebrating Ulysses S. Grant’s 100th birthday in the small Ohio town where Grant was born, because the steamer is kind of crowded. He doesn’t, and the observation deck collapses. Instead he sails on the War Dept. tugboat Cayuga, on which a 9-year-old stowaway is found on the way back. Hardy not only stops the boy being removed, but takes him to dinner at Charles Taft’s house.

Oh, and happy Ulysses S. Grant Day, I guess, to those who celebrate.

British newspapers have been offering free insurance to their subscribers. Anyway, Winston Churchill puts in a claim to three of these papers after falling off a polo pony while drunk (I’m just assuming the last part, but c’mon it’s Churchill).

At the Dáil Éireann, Irish Free State Pres. Arthur Griffith says Éamon de Valera used to be willing to compromise on the issue of the Republic. De Valera says that’s a lie. Griffith replies, “I won’t be intimidated by any gunmen here.”

Near East Relief made a film last year to promote famine relief, Alice in Hungerland. Its star Esther Razon, plucked out of a Constantinople orphanage to play the lead, has since been adopted by Florence Spencer Duryea. But Rabbi Stephen Wise is complaining that little Esther (now called Alice) is not being raised as a Jew and wants to take her and give her to a Jewish family. Won’t happen.

Henry Ford’s auto is stolen. The policeman he phoned to report it asks what kind of car it is.

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In other news, there’s a “Lady Belper.” And a Baron Belper. That’s the 3rd Baron Belper, born Algernon Henry Strutt. How these people escaped into the real world from the pages of a P.G. Wodehouse story, I do not know.

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Today -100: April 27, 1922: By the throat

Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, who began the Nick Carter, Detective stories in 1890 and wrote, according to MacLean’s, 40 million words in over 1,000 Nick Carter stories, now penniless, shoots himself in the Hotel Broztell. “Things have gone to smash with me, and I’m just tired out, and want to try the long sleep,” he says in a letter. He was 61.

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Lenin has a second operation to remove a remaining bullet fragment.

King Gustav of Sweden is injured when his automobile is hit by the car of a Geneva banker, which is probably a metaphor of some kind.

Speaking of metaphors, NYC District Attorney Joab Banton says “We’ve got the crime wave by the throat.”

Fritz Lang’s film Dr Mabuse the Gambler part 1 premieres in Germany.

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Today -100: April 26, 1922: Of bullets, klans, and dinosaurs

Surgeons remove the bullet from Lenin’s side that’s been there since an assassination attempt 3 years ago.

A large group of Klansmen attack the home of the Elduayen family in Inglewood, California, for unknown reasons. A night marshal shoots at the band, killing a deputy constable participating in the event in his other capacity as a Kluxer.

A hunting party in Argentina fails to find that plesiosaur, which totally exists.

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Today -100: April 25, 1922: Harding disapproves

On the 6th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Dublin has a one-day strike to protest the developing civil war. Everything shuts down, including telephones, trains, and newspapers.

Last week cops trying to arrest moonshiners in Clay County, Kentucky were attacked. So Circuit Court Judge Hiram Johnson orders the arrest of everyone over 12 in the Mill Creek neighborhood.

Some of the former German princes are forming an organization to demand the return of the property they lost when they abdicated in 1918. Günther Victor, the ex-prince of Schwarzburg, says the agreements made along with abdication are “null and void, as contrary to good morals,” suffer from irregularities, and were made “under compulsion and misapprehension.”

Nebraska bans non-citizens buying property (existing non-citizens are grandfathered in).

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