Today -100: June 8, 1922: Of strokes and klans

Acting Russian Premier Lev Kamenev says Lenin didn’t have a stroke after all.

Lenin totally had a stroke.

The Los Angeles County Grand Jury indicts 43 members of the Ku Klux Klan for the attack on a family in Inglewood in April. I still don’t know what that was all about.

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Today -100: June 7, 1922: Of Jew quotas, kingly close calls, and indoor choppers

Massachusetts Gov. Channing Cox will appoint a committee to investigate whether Harvard discriminates against Jews.

Italian King Victor Emmanuel’s car is almost hit by a train.

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Today -100: June 6, 1922: Of trusts, motor automatism, bigamy, acid attacks, and presidential candidate assembly lines

The Supreme Court rules that unions can be sued under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for striking, which is definitely not how the act was intended to be used, and strike funds can be assessed for damages. However in this particular case the Court rules in favor of the union, deciding that the national UMW was not responsible for a 1914 coal miners’ strike, the local branch was, and it didn’t interfere with interstate commerce. Chief Justice Taft expresses “regret” that the Court can’t punish the union.

In more important rulings, the Supreme Court refuses to define what constitutes a ouija board. The Baltimore Talking Board Company objects to its ouija boards being taxed as sporting goods, when they are obviously “a grade of motor automatism, involving considerable subconscious action of intelligence” and so... a children’s toy. The Court won’t consider the company’s appeal from a lower court. Also, why does spellcheck want me to capitalize ouija?

The British shell Pettigoe, a town in the Irish Free State on the border with Northern Ireland which an IRA unit had occupied, and Michael Collins is not best pleased.

The bigamy charge against Rudolph Valentino is thrown out.

Former German chancellor Philipp Scheidemann (SPD) is attacked with prussic acid whilst on vacation. Herr S. shoots at his assailant a couple of times (missing) before losing consciousness, but seems to be mostly unharmed.

Henry Ford has said (privately) that he’d be willing to be drafted to run for president, if he didn’t have to spend any of his own money.

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Today -100: June 5, 1922: Of aroused leaders, ape ancestors, goldfish, and Jew quotas

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Hungarian elections: Socialists win seats in Parliament for the first time, and 8 of 11 cabinet members fail to be reelected. There was a secret ballot in the cities but open voting in the countryside, if I’m understanding correctly.

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Gerald, his name was Gerald. William Jennings Bryan has been scoring points, or what he thinks are points, by offering rewards to professors, such as this one to a West Virginia University biology professor and any other professors at the U willing to declare their belief in the Bible.

Some chemical the Parisian authorities put in the water supply is killing all the goldfish.

The Harvard University Faculty refuses to give the Admission Board the power to establish a quota for Jewish students.

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Today -100: June 4, 1922: Stroking Lenin

So the US won’t go to any of the international conferences, but Harding will join the investigation of Turkish atrocities against Christians?

Britain is sending troops, lots of troops, into Northern Ireland.

Lenin has a stroke, a complication of the surgeries that removed the bullet from that old assassination attempt. I’m surprised they made the news public so quickly.

An anti-lynching parade in NYC calls for the federal Dyer anti-lynching bill to be passed. It won’t be. Until 2022.

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Today -100: June 3, 1922: Cavorting dinosaurs are the best dinosaurs

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Arthur Conan Doyle shows film of dinos at the dinner of the Society of American Magicians, without explaining that they’re from the film of his The Lost World, which hasn’t been released yet (and won’t be for quite some time due to patent infringement issues over the special effects). Also, Harry Houdini does some magic stuff, so an interesting evening, I guess.

Traverse City, Michigan Mayor Lafayette Swanton bans women wearing knickerbockers. So in protest, there will be a knickerbocker parade.

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Today -100: June 2, 1922: Of Jewish students, constabularies, and flappers

Harvard plans to restrict admissions, although there will be a long period of “general discussion” about how to do that. The university says it’s running out of classrooms and dorms. And obviously if there’s going to be some sort of limitation, “It is natural that... there should be talk about the proportion of Jews at the college.” Which in 1922 is about 20%, because up until now Harvard has been relatively liberal compared to, say, Yale and Princeton.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary comes into existence, including many cops from the old Royal Irish Constabulary. Which I only mention so I can bring up that when they decided to rename it 20 years ago to remove the divisive term Ulster, it took a surprisingly long time for them to realize there was a problem with “Northern Irish Police Service”...

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Today -100: June 1, 1922: Of tunnels, archduchesses, peasants, and apache duels

Ground is broken for what will be called the Holland Tunnel. It is done semi-secretly, in the middle of the night, because the mayor of Jersey City is demanding money from the New York Commission to widen streets leading to the vehicular tunnel and is threatening an injunction, which the Commission thinks would be less likely to be issued if construction is already underway. 

Thousands of Fascists are gathering in Bologna. They’re building barricades, burning left-wing newspapers, bombing club-houses, and forcing local Socialist and Communist mayors to resign.

The former Austro-Hungarian Empress Zita, widow of Charles, gives birth to Archduchess Elisabeth, who is named after the wife of Emperor Franz Josef, because you definitely want to name your kid after someone who was assassinated (I recently watched the 1st of the three 1950s “Sissi” films about the empress, played by Romy Schneider; weirdly light-hearted, with a comic bumbling policeman and everything. I’m guessing the next two movies don’t cover the periods when her son killed himself at Mayerling in a suicide pact with his mistress, as was the custom, and her death, stabbed by an Italian anarchist). This Elisabeth will marry a Liechtensteiner prince.

The British “crush” a Hottentot uprising in the League of Nations mandate in South West Africa (Namibia), using, among other things, aerial bombardment.

Aleksandar Stamboliyski, the “peasant premier” of Bulgaria, warns the bourgeoisie that it is the peasantry which is now in control. He says Sofia is “another Sodom and Gomorrah, inhabited by speculators and unproducers,” which I’m just gonna go ahead and assume is code for Jews, and warns the king to just stay out of it. He supports women’s suffrage only for women earning a living (not counting the 4 months per year free work for the government he is requiring bourgeois girls of Sofia and Varna aged 16 to 20 perform).

Two members of Paris “apaches” (street gangs, more or less), Maurice “The Terror” Pinteaux and Charles “The Assassin” Allemange, fight a duel over Louise “Loulou the Cunning” Rastie (Rattier?), in which The Terror kills The Assassin. At his trial, he claimed that the duel was fought in the regulation manner (though with knives rather than swords or pistols), calling experts on dueling and recent duelists to testify that it was just like duels fought by nobles and newspaper editors. Nevertheless, Mr. Terror and his seconds are sentenced to 2 years.

The Nevada Supreme Court upholds the validity of Mary Pickford’s divorce from Owen Moore (and thus her remarriage to Douglas Fairbanks).

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Today -100: May 31, 1922: Of memorials and parades

The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated by Harding (and where’s the Harding Memorial, I ask you?). Present are some Civil War vets, a few of whom knew Lincoln personally, as well as Robert Todd Lincoln. They’ve been building this thing since 1914. Is the dedication segregated? What do you think?

New Yorkers celebrate Memorial Day with a parade in which a soldier is crushed between two tanks and a children’s procession which witnesses two men run over by an elevated train.

Former Texas Gov. James Ferguson, impeached in 1917, and his wife Miriam (not sure if they’re doing that obnoxious “Ma” and “Pa” shtick yet) are both running for the US Senate, although only she has filed for it so far.

Flags are flown at half-staff at Germany’s Reichstag building and cabinet members all wear black in sorrow at the loss of Upper Silesia to Poland.

The Italian government bans all parades, in order to prevent Fascist-Communist clashes and, presumably, soldiers being crushed by tanks.

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Today -100: May 30, 1922: Of lynchings

A black man, William Byrd, accused of killing a farmer is lynched in Wayne County, Georgia, shot to death and his body burned by a mob. Byrd was one of several blacks being brought in by truck to work on the farmer’s farm, and he was pissed that the driver refused to let his wife sit inside the truck.

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Today -100: May 29, 1922: From each according to their means... It’s a cook book!

Can this be true? Supposedly there’s a government exhibit in Moscow with photos (taken by the Cheka) and other evidence of cannibalism in the famine regions. And there’s a notice posted on walls in Moscow: “These people are not cannibals who eat their dead because they are hungry; but those are cannibals who do not give of their surplus to the hungry.” Evidently it’s the Bolshevist press that’s spreading the cannibalism stories. Mothers strangling their children in order to eat them, a new restaurant in Pongstcher in Samara which only serves human, etc.

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Today -100: May 28, 1922: Of signs of reviving idealism, mandates, odd feet, treason, and lynchings

Former President Woodrow Wilson, who’s been increasingly involving himself in politics again recently, praises the Democratic Union of Women of Manhattan for rejecting any William Randolph Hearst candidacy. He calls their act “one of the many signs of the reviving idealism of the country.” 

The pope protests to the League of Nations about the British mandate in Palestine, which he says threatens religious equality, by which he means it gives too much power to Zionist Jews.

Dancer Isadora Duncan is banned from Britain, and possibly the US as well, because she’s a Russian citizen now, as far as they’re concerned, having married Ukranian poet Sergei Yesenin earlier this month.

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Decoration Day will be celebrated by the 49 widows of War of 1812 soldiers. None of that war’s soldiers are alive, but there are 73 living vets of the Mexican-American War, the youngest of whom are 89, so they must have been, what, 14 when they joined up?

Charles Blizzard of the United Mine Workers is acquitted of treason for the West Virginia miners’ strike. The jury didn’t take much time. I hadn’t realized this, but the charge of treason against Blizzard and many other union officials is treason against West Virginia. Are people ever charged with treason against a state these days?

Fascists are again killing Communists all over Italy. Firearm permits have been withdrawn for the Rome region and in Florence guns and walking canes are also banned.

A black man is lynched in Waco, Texas, and Texas Rangers are now guarding 5 black men sentenced for murder in McLellan County Jail, which is surrounded by a mob.

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Today -100: May 27, 1922: This blog is also aging backwards

At a meeting called for the chair of the NYC Transit Commission to explain the plans for new subways, the president of the Central Park West and Columbus Avenue Association objects to the plans to place the terminus in the negro district. A director of the Association says “There is little use in trying to beautify Central Park West if the line serving it terminates in the black belt of Harlem.”

The Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act is signed by Harding, establishing a Federal Narcotics Board to regulate the importation and sale of raw opium, cocoa leaves and the like for legitimate purposes.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” is published in The Smart Set.

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Today -100: May 26, 1922: Potato potatah

With diplomatic relations between the US and Germany resumed, a new ambassador arrives in Washington, Dr. Otto Wiedfeldt. It is pointed out that Wiedfeldt, in addressing Pres. Harding, referred to himself as ambassador of the German Empire, while Harding called the country the Republic of Germany.

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Today -100: May 25, 1922: Of normal threatening, bailiffs, lawless kleagles, and lynchings

Nope, there’s no Communist revolution in Bulgaria, and the king has not fled the country. The US ambassador informs the State Dept, “While the political situation is rather threatening, conditions generally are normal.”

We haven’t heard much about Illinois Gov. Len Small’s corruption trial, but now the jury is threatening to strike because the elderly bailiffs have been insisting they go to bed at 9:00. The bailiffs complain that the jurors make fun of them when they can’t keep up during their daily constitutional. 

Oh no! There’s turmoil in the California Ku Klux Klan, and all the kleagles have been de-kleagled because of “lawlessness.”

A black man accused of cattle rustlin’ is whipped to death in Texas, which has seen an awful lot of lynchings this month. Lieutenant Governor Lynch Davidson says, “What? What’re you looking at me for?”

And black man Jom Denson escapes a lynch mob in Georgia when the mob’s car breaks down. He flees into the woods but is later recaptured and put in “safe keeping” in Bibb County jail, although since he’s been sentenced to hang – legally, so that’s ok, right? – the safety of the keeping might be in some question.

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Today -100: May 24, 1922: Of burning hotels, Irish roses, and pearls

The Catholic Protection Committee in Northern Ireland telegrams Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, drawing to his attention that 27 Catholics have been killed in 10 days and hundreds evicted. And in Dublin a hotel owned by Churchill is burned down by arson.

Following the assassination of Northern Ireland Parliament MP William Twaddell, NI bans the IRA, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and various associated organizations, and arrests hundreds of supposed IRA leaders. PM Sir James Craig says that the agreement between the two sides in the South means he can no longer deal with the Irish Free State government – not that he was actually cooperating with them in anything.

In other, um, Irish news, “Abie’s Irish Rose” opens on Broadway. Anne Nichols’s play tells the story of a Jewish boy and an Irish Catholic girl who marry. The NYT says it’s “funny.” It will run until 1927, setting a Broadway record. Robert Benchley wrote: “People laugh at this every night, which explains why a democracy can never be a success.”

Mrs. Hammell, president of the League of Women Voters, is in a legal dispute with her maid. The maid ate one of the clams she was opening for her boss’s dinner and nearly choked to death on a pearl. Hammell demanded the pearl but Lottie refused to give it up. She has consulted a lawyer, who says she has title to it. This is on the front page of the NYT, above the fold.

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Today -100: May 23, 1922: Such an event as this murder demands just retribution

William Twaddell, a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament, is assassinated by 3 members of the IRA on the streets of Belfast. Whether this story is funny or not depends entirely on how Mr. Twaddell pronounced his name. NI PM Sir James Craig calls for a “just retribution.”

The violence has been ramping up in Ulster, while the Irish Free State has been calming down since the Free State and anti-Treaty sides came to an agreement for a coalition government and for elections next month, an agreement which has British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill so worried that he demands both sides come to London to explain it to him. The problem is that the agreement means there won’t, for now, be a proper referendum on the new constitution (won’t be until the 1930s, in fact).

Nicaragua has an 8-hour revolution. Rebels capture a fortress overlooking Managua, but the US Marines, still occupying the country, as was the custom, threaten to use their artillery on the fortress to “protect American interests.” The rebels surrender after the Marines broker a conference between them and the government at which the latter agrees to pardon any civilian rebels and to limit the imprisonment of military rebels to 30 days.

The outside world seems to have no news sources inside Bulgaria, so there is no confirmation or denial today of yesterday’s rumor of an alliterative Communist coup there, but in the only dispatch coming from the country today, about a forthcoming Peasant Congress, “no mention was made of revolutionary activities.”

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Today -100: May 22, 1922: Fake news -100

There’s a Communist revolt in Bulgaria. King Boris is reported to have fled the country.

None of that is true.

I haven’t checked out the radio schedules for a while. Here’s this evening’s schedule for WJZ, Newark:

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Today -100: May 21, 1922: I loved deeply, but in loving I may have erred

Al Smith won’t run for US Senate on the Democratic ticket if William Randolph Hearst is the D. candidate for governor.

Charles Hall is still leading in the vote-counting for the Republican primary for governor. The NYT annoyingly says, with no follow-up whatsoever, “Never before in Oregon’s history has religion entered so strongly into a political campaign.”

Rudolph Valentino is arrested for bigamy. “I loved deeply,” Rudy says, “but in loving I may have erred.” Given that the second marriage was performed in Mexico, I don’t see where the LA district attorney’s office even has jurisdiction.

A 19-year-old black man, Joe Winters, accused of attacking a white woman is burned to death in Conroe, Texas. And a 60-year-old black man, Mose Bozier, accused of a similar crime, is hanged by a mob near Allentown, Texas.

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Today -100: May 20, 1922: Of klandidates, peeresses, and flour

In the Oregon primaries, where vote-counting is not finished, State Senator Charles Hall is leading in the Republican primary for governor over incumbent Ben Olcott. When the counting’s done, Olcott will narrowly win the primary and then lose the general election. What’s interesting is that Hall is described as the Ku Klux Klan candidate. This is the first suggestion in the NYT that the Klan might be becoming an electoral force. In the general election, the Kluxers will strongly back Democrat Walter Pierce against Gov. Olcott, who has spoken against them. 

The House of Lords’ Committee on Privileges rejects letting icky girls into the Lords.

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She’s still in the hospital, and he’s in the prison hospital, because he shot himself after shooting her. But they’re giving him bail so he can marry her, because they’re just pullin’ for these wacky kids, I guess.

The National Woman’s Party’s ceremony dedicating its new D.C. hq will use a trowel provided by Charlotte Pierce (1830-1924), the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls in 1848. The building they’ll be tearing down to be replaced by a larger one is called the Old Capitol. It’s where Congress sat after the British burned the capitol in the War of 1812, and where Pres. Monroe was sworn in.

Henry Ford claims to have invented a new type of flour, which will be cheaper and healthier than existing flours.

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