Today -100: July 10, 1922: The Ku Klux Klan is going to make this a white country

Communist Party circulars call on railwaymen to strike, ignoring injunctions and the, you know, US Army.

At a speech before the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Marcus Garvey says “The Ku Klux Klan is going to make this a white country,” he says, so negroes should go back to, you know, Africa.

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Today -100: July 9, 1922: Of assassinations and asparagus

German authorities are confident that the attempted assassination of editor Maximilian Harden was ordered by the Deutschvölkische Partei, which is big among Bavarian monarchists and in whose newspaper, “extinction of Jews, distinguished Republicans and members of the Entente commissions is preached with impartiality.” Anti-Semitic publisher Albert Grenz has admitted acting as go-between to hire the two assassins.

The Harding Admin has been pushing the idea of allowing members of the Cabinet to sit in Congress as non-voting members.

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Today -100: July 8, 1922: Of indices, ectoplasm, immigrants, and breaches of promises

The Vatican puts all of Anatole France’s works on the Index.

Experiments at the Sorbonne, conducted with three actual Sorbonne professors and a medium Eva (they may mean spirit guide), fail to detect ectoplasm during seances.

The start of the immigrant-quota year on July 1st saw a race of ships from Europe, as last year. The annual Greek quota has already been filled. Indeed, of the 165 arriving on the Acropolis, only 60 will be admitted. This is a monumentally stupid system.

Conservatives do well in the elections for the Dutch upper house, the first in which women can vote. 7 women are elected (no, I don’t know of how many who ran, or how many seats there are, and don’t feel like looking it up). The paper says the majority of women didn’t vote the same way as their husbands – how do they know that? is there no secret ballot?

Cathal Brugha (aka Charles Burgess), the Irish minister for defence from 1919 until January 1922, who commanded rebel forces in O’Connell Street, is killed whilst failing to surrender.

Mary Sterner wins $250 in a breach of promise suit against actor John Pauls. 6 years after they met, he said he’d marry her in Vienna. She sailed, he didn’t, and when she came back she found that he’d married someone else. Which led me to wonder when breach of promise suits stopped being a thing in law. Evidently they’re still a thing in half the states and do occasionally wind up in court (I think mostly to recover costs of weddings that didn’t happen).

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Today -100: July 7, 1922: Of horse bridges, metropolitans, and naughty newsreels

The Irish Free State calls on young men to join the army, which has up until now consisted almost entirely of IRA men.

From now on, the Brooklyn Bridge will be reserved for the exclusive use of horse-drawn traffic and the Manhattan Bridge for motor-drawn traffic. The Brooklyn Bridge will be horse-only until 1950. And get a bike lane in 2021.

Russia sentences 11 people, including the Metropolitan of Petrograd and various bishops and archbishops, to death for interfering with the seizure of church treasures. 

The NY Supreme Court’s appellate division rules that the State Motion Picture Commission can censor newsreels. Evidently Pathé showed a girl/woman in a bathing suit in Atlantic City.

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Today -100: July 6, 1922: Of flags, extraditions, and overly exciting sports

A. Bruce Bielaski, the former head of the Dept of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, who escaped kidnappers in Mexico after 3 days, is ordered arrested. Newspapers have been claiming he connived at his own kidnapping to discredit the Obregón government. 

The last rebel stronghold in Dublin surrenders. The Free State is now in charge of what remains of Dublin. Let the executions begin! 

No one knows where Éamon de Valera is.

Awkward NYT Juxtaposition of the Day -100:  

In Germany, tensions are high over the recent assassinations. In Saxony, a bunch of republican workers demand Count Gneisenau remove the imperial flag from his chateau. The graf’s lackeys respond with fatal rifle and machine gun fire. The workers then raid a sharpshooters’ association and return to the battle, with more deaths on both sides. The next day a bunch of Communist miners arrive, heavily armed, and get that damned flag down. There are a bunch of other violent incidents scattered throughout Germany, but this was the most entertaining. The Wirth government is working on a bill to increase powers to Defend the Republic, but will need Communist votes in the Reichstag.

Gov. Harry Davis (R) of Ohio refuses to extradite a black man to Georgia to face murder charges, saying he’d be lynched.

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Today -100: July 5, 1922: Of fancied senses of personal liberty and popcorn time at the Sorbonne

The Irish Free State forces are bombarding rebel-occupied hotels on O’Connell Street in Dublin. And they’re getting 3 planes from England for use tomorrow to bomb Dublin if Éamon de Valera refuses to surrender.

Polish authorities prohibit an anti-Semitic lecture in Vilna (Vilnius), resulting in a riot in which a cop is killed.

Pres. Harding gives a speech at Marion, Ohio for July 4th. He mentions Prohibition, which he almost never does, saying it’s the will of America, so it must be “sustained by the Government and public opinion” against a minority denied “a fancied sense of personal liberty.” He also talks about the “right to work,” by which he means the government will help corporations which hire strikebreakers.

In Paris, surgeon Jean Louis Faure films an operation he performs, the removal of a fibroma from a stomach, and shows it in a class at the Sorbonne. Which reminds me of an obscure fact I happen to know: the first autopsy shown on British tv was performed by Jonathan Miller of Beyond the Fringe.

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Today -100: July 4, 1922: Outlaw strikes are the coolest kind of strikes

11 railroad companies centered in New York say strikers will be fired, and re-employed only with loss of seniority, while the new strikebreakers will be retained. This after the Railroad Labor Road declares the strike an “outlaw strike.”

The NYT correspondent in Dublin reports that the Free State forces have nearly won, that many of the republicans are boys or “mere roughs,” that the Army is restraining itself in a “clean, humane fashion” and.... yeah, the story was passed by the army censor, although one could be forgiven for thinking it was actually written by the army censor.

I missed a phrase used by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George at the Hague Conference: he warned against “hungry Russia armed by angry Germany.”

Another day, another assassination, this time a failed attempt to kill Maximilian Harden, editor of Die Zunkuft. Two men stab him on the street. One is captured; he’s carrying a membership card in the Association of National-Minded Soldiers, a reactionary anti-Semitic group (Harden is Jewish).

Forcibly retired kaiser Wilhelm still hasn’t denounced the assassination of Walther Rathenau.

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Today -100: July 3, 1922: Of civil wars and orphan pity

Irish Free State troops bombard rebel strongholds in Dublin.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 2, 1922: Of thankless jobs, snipers, lynchings, opium, and aluminum

The fall of the Four Courts is not the end of it. Anti-Treaty IRAers are occupying 40 or so buildings, from which they’re merrily sniping, as was the custom.

Two black men, James Harvey and Joe Jordan, are seized from a deputy sheriff by a mob and lynched in, ahem, Liberty County, Georgia. Surprisingly, 4 of the lynch mob will be convicted of murder.

As Alien Property Custodian during the war, Francis Garvan gave a bunch of German patents to the Chemical Foundation of New York, which is headed by... Francis Garvan. Pres. Harding demands the Foundation give up the patents.

In 1912 the US and other countries created the Hague opium convention to cut down the illegal drug trade. That has since been superceded by the League of Nations, which has been trying to get information from the US about why it’s importing so many drugs, but the US has been pretending that the League of Nations doesn’t exist and the Hague convention still does. Finally, someone got the Dutch government to ask the US the same questions the League has been asking, and this time the US answered, and the Netherlands turned over the information to the League. 

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 1, 1922: Zero courts?

The rebels occupying the Four Courts in Dublin surrender after explosions, either deliberately set by the rebels or from their explosives store blowing up accidentally, destroy the  building and most of the national archives.

Churchill, naturally, blames a mine laid by the rebels.

400,000 railroad workers go on strike. They want to reverse a wage cut ordered by the Railroad Labor Board, as well as rules ending overtime pay, etc.

John Vitelle, the former Exalted Cyclops (that’s the best kind of cyclops) of the Taft, California Ku Klux Klan, is convicted of assaulting a doctor as part of a Klan mob. Don’t know what they had against the doc.

The Tuskegee Institute says 12 of the 30 lynchings in the US from January to June of 1922 were in Texas, 7 in Mississippi, and 4 in Georgia. 2 of the victims were white, 28 black.

At the Hague Conf, Russia ups its demand for credits to $1.6 billion, in exchange for paying its Romanov debts, eventually.

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Today -100: June 30, 1922: Recreant Irishmen are the worst kind

The Irish Free Staters are steadily taking charge of, or at least blowing to bits, the Four Courts, which is (are?) built like a fortress. The rebels proclaim: “The fateful hour has come. At the dictation of our hereditary enemy our rightful cause is being treacherously assailed by recreant Irishmen.”

British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill says the Free State hasn’t asked for any assistance; “This is purely an Irish quarrel”. Funny how sometimes Ireland is an integral part of the British Empire and other times... not.

Metaphor of the Day -100:  Three of retired-kaiser Wilhelm’s state carriages are sold at auction. They are purchased by an undertaker to use for funerals. 

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Today -100: June 29, 1922: Whoop for Hooper

Maxim Litvinoff, head of the Soviet delegation to the Hague Conference, says Russia will only recognize its debts (not, I think, including war debts) if it’s assured of a moratorium on paying them of, say, fifty years. He’s also resisting giving any details of Russia’s budget.

And we get the second-ever woman candidate for the US Senate. Selected by the Democratic convention, Jessie “Mrs. Ben” Hooper, the president of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, will run against Fighting Bob La Follette. Her slogan will be “Whoop for Hooper,” which is super dooper. The convention also selects not one but two candidates for governor, one wet and one dry.

Speaking of slogans, campaign buttons appear for William Randolph Hearst: “A Business Man for Governor.” It’s not exactly “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” or “Rosebud,” is it?

Irish Free State forces try to drive Rory O’Connor’s anti-Treaty IRAers out of the Four Courts, which now sport many new holes, as do many civilians and an unknown number of combatants on both sides. O’Connor issues a statement, posted all over Dublin – several NYT reporters are perplexed as to how a man under siege can do this – saying that none of his forces have been killed yet and “The boys are glorious and will fight for the republic to the end.” He points out that “Mr. Churchill cracked the whip in his speech Monday night when he ordered the Provisional Government to attack the Four Courts. His Free State agents have obeyed.” Éamon de Valera agrees with all that, saying the Republicans “are not willing that Ireland’s independence should be abandoned under the lash of an alien government.” Churchill issues a statement saying the Free State is acting entirely on its own and not in response to his statement telling them to do what they’re now doing and yes, we’ll certainly give them arms to suppress the Republicans if necessary.

The Free State claims the real reason it’s attacking the rebels now is that they’ve been extorting companies under the pretext of the boycott of Belfast, “which has no authorised existence.” Also, the rebels kidnapped a general.

The Communist Party of Great Britain applies to be affiliated to the Labour Party (like the Fabian Society and other groups), but is turned down by the Labour Conference. 

Russia lifts the limit of two letters a month that could be received by Russians from the US.

A. Bruce Bielaski escapes his Mexican captors while they’re sleeping.

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Today -100: June 28, 1922: Of hostages, credits, and parking lots

Mexican rebel Gen. Gorozave, whoever that may be, is holding 40 American employees of the Cortez Oil Company in the Tampico district hostage, as well as the company’s equipment, demanding 15,000 pesos, which is the equivalent of some money.

At the Hague Conference, Russia says it won’t talk about debts or property until there’s some sort of agreement on credits. Guess what subjects the other powers are saying should come first.

This time, none of the Russian delegates are wearing top hats.

Alderman Rudolph Hannock of the Bronx has an idea for the Board: public parking stations. You know, parking lots.

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Today -100: June 27, 1922: Of ultimata, indefinite occupations, and goodykoontzes

In the British Parliament, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill demands the Provisional Government of Ireland suppress the anti-treaty IRA faction. The present situation, he says, is a violation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and if the Irish government doesn’t crack down Britain is free to renounce the treaty and step in. Prime Minister David Lloyd George also makes a speech, which is considered “gloomy.”

The Senate committee on the US occupation of Haiti and Santo Domingo calls for “indefinite” continuation of the occupation of Haiti, as withdrawal would lead to revolution and brigandage. It dismisses most of the complaints of cruelty by Marines as false or hearsay testimony by illiterate natives and complains about “the process by which biased or interested individuals and committees and propagandists have seized on isolated instances, or have adopted as true any rumor however vile or baseless in an effort to bring into general disrepute the whole American naval force in Haiti.” They claim the majority of Haitians actually quite like being occupied.

$5,000 in ransom is sent for the release of former proto-FBI head A. Bruce Bielaski. The Mexican government orders that anyone connected with the kidnapping should be immediately executed.

Rep. Wells Goodykoontz (R-West Virginia, including Mingo) denounces the coal strike murders in Illinois and says the UMW should help the state prosecute its members. Rep. Edward Denison (R-Illinois, including Herrin) says Goodykoontz shouldn’t believe everything he reads in the newspaper. And yes, I’m only including item this to point out that there’s a congresscritter named Wells Goodykoontz. Which is also his porn name.

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Today -100: June 26, 1922: A state of political bestiality prevails

A coroner’s jury puts the whole blame for the murders of 19 scabs and two union miners in Herrin, Illinois last week on the Southern Illinois Coal Company.

At the party celebrating Illinois Gov. Len Small’s acquittal, his wife has a stroke which, well, I’ll let her doctors’ statement say it: “Absolutely no hope. Fatal case. Sinking rapidly.”

There are worries that the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson means the IRA will continue killing people in London, but it is decided not to arm the police because that would be un-English.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth accuses the Pan-Germans of creating the atmosphere in which the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau took place. “A state of political bestiality prevails. ... Our enemies are those who pour poison into the nation’s wounds. These enemies are on the Right.” Steps are taken to ban any meetings or processions inciting the destruction of the Weimar Republic’s constitution and to ban organizations doing the same.

Postmasters are complaining that dry police are storing seized liquor at post offices, which are now too smelly to work in.

A. Bruce Bielaski, the former director of the forerunner to the FBI (1912-19), is kidnapped in Mexico.

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Today -100: June 25, 1922: Of Organization C, acquittals, and embittered factions

Another day, another assassination. This time it’s German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, killed in a drive-by utilizing submachine guns and hand grenades by members of the Organization Consul (or “Organization C,” to give it the Bond-villainous-organization name it likes to call itself), a far-right nationalist terrorist group banned after the Kapp Putsch, the same group that tried to kill former chancellor Philipp Scheidemann earlier this month and which has assassinated literally hundreds of people, starting with Matthias Erzberger last year.

After the Reichstag is told of the murder, left-wing deputies rage at the Nationalists, who hated Rathenau because of the Treaty of Rapallo with Russia and because he was a, you know, Jew (his assassins thought him one of the Elders of Zion, of Protocols fame). The Socialist & Communist deputies are especially pissed at Karl Helfferich of the DNVP, who made a vituperative speech about Rathenau just yesterday.

Germans worry that this is the start of a reactionary coup.

Of the 3 assassins, 2 will die in a shootout with the police (monuments will be erected to them after 1933), while the 20-year-old driver Ernst Werner Techow will be captured, tried, convicted of accessory to murder, and... released in 1928 an amnesty. He’ll join the Nazi Party but quarrel with them. He’ll be killed after being taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945.

Illinois Gov. Len Small and Lt Gov. Fred Sterling are acquitted of conspiracy by a corrupt jury.

The AFL conference supports Gompers in refusing to call for the US to recognize Soviet Russia.

Final Irish election results: Of 128 seats, 58 go to “Treatyites,” 36 to Antis (both groups part of Sinn Féin), the rest going to Labour (17), the Farmers’ Party (7), Commercial Independents (6), and Trinity College, Dublin (4).

Headline of the Day -100, or any day, really:  

But Northern Ireland PM Sir James Craig says “Ulster people are too sensible to be provoked into retaliation by the murder of the Field Marshal.”

Japan says it will remove its troops from Siberia by October 30. And it promises a non-aggression policy in the future.

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Today -100: June 24, 1922: Of shaking hands with murder, lynchings, and governments of savages

The widow of the assassinated MP Sir Henry Wilson tries to ban Cabinet members from his funeral, because... he opposed the government’s Irish policy, evidently telling Lloyd George after the latter began negotiations with Sinn Féin that “You have shaken hands with murder,” and somehow that lead to his death? ... but she is browbeaten into allowing them after she’s told it would be disrespectful to the king. They’re coercing her a day after she saw her husband killed but they’re talking about respect.

The IRA denies responsibility for the assassination, saying we’d certainly admit it if we’d done it, hell we wouldn’t shut up about it, have you met us? So does Éamon de Valera, who doesn’t seem exactly upset by it.

Although the two assassins were captured, Scotland Yard is rounding up the usual suspects, as is the usual custom.

Warren Lewis, an 18-year-old black man, is lynched in New Dacus, Texas.

The American Federation of Labor re-elects Samuel Gompers as president. He is immediately challenged by members who want the AFL to support recognition of Russia or, as Gompers puts it, “this government of savages.”

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Today -100: June 23, 1922: Of assassinations, show trials, and bad gonads

Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, current MP for North Down in Northern Ireland, is shot dead outside his house in London by two IRA men. He tried to defend himself with his sword. I mean he retired from the Army when he stood for Parliament a few months ago, but I guess he was still just wandering around London in uniform, with a sword. The assassins are captured (one of them has a wooden leg, which probably didn’t help) after a chase in which they shot a constable and a bystander; they’ll be executed. (Reading further in the story, I begin to doubt the sword thing). With no evidence whatsoever, Northern Ireland PM Sir James Craig blames “a wide conspiracy against those who are fighting the battle of Ulster.”

Workers, quite possibly orchestrated by the Soviet government, demonstrate at the Social Revolutionaries’ show trial in Moscow, demanding the death penalty. Prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko (who will later experience Soviet justice from the other side) allows representatives of the demonstrators to enter and address the court because “we are only carrying out their wishes.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

A whole bunch of scab coal miners are killed in Herrin, Illinois. There’s a “death march” and everything. And a lot of mine equipment is dynamited.

Medical Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: June 22, 1922: Of mandates, funky vitamins, menaces, shameful documents, tools of international bankers, and barrels

The British House of Lords rejects the League of Nations mandate for Palestine for violating the pledges Britain made to the people of Palestine by giving the Zionist minority more power than the Arab majority.

Several thousand striking coal miners attack a mine near Herrin, Illinois, killing 22 scabs.

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Sounds like the title of a late ‘60s movie that Vincent Price was ill-advised to agree to. Casimir Funk, by the way, discovered vitamins and came up with that word, although he spelled it vitamine.

The Illinois state Supreme Court affirms the imprisonment of 19 Communists for, you know, being Communists. “Communists are a menace,” says the court.

Éamon de Valera says the proposed Irish constitution will “exclude from public service, and practically disfranchise, every honest Republican” by the required oath to the king and Empire. The Republic of Ireland newspaper, edited by Erskine Childers, who lost his election race for the Dáil, calls it a “shameful document.”

The Paterson, New Jersey Ku Klux Klan protests the closing of public schools to honor the late Dean William McNulty of St. John’s Catholic Church, which they say violates the separation of church & state.

NYC Mayor John Hylan denounces Democratic women who prefer Alfred E. Smith over William Randolph Hearst for governor of NY as “misguided” tools of “international bankers who have their clutches on the Government at Washington” and “public utilities and corporate interests which are in control of the State Government”. 

The bathing suit war continues in Atlantic City, which has decreed that bathers must wear coats over their bathing suits as they walk to and from the beach. As a protest, the guests of one unnamed hotel buy barrels to wear instead.

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Today -100: June 21, 1922: First women

Anna Dickie Olesen wins the Minnesota Democratic primary for US Senate, the first major party nomination of a woman for the Senate. This follows the D. party convention’s endorsement of her. She will lose the general election. Mrs Peter Oleson, as she and her husband would prefer she not to be called, reassures that women’s participation in politics need not interfere with housework.

The Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament, although she didn’t take her seat, is defeated for re-election to the Dáil. 

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