Today -100: August 8, 1922: Of life expectancy, extraordinary measures, tongs, and haircuts

Life expectancy in the US is highest in Kansas, at 60. Well, white Kansans. Most of the Commerce Dept statistics reported here, based on the 1920 census, are just for white folks (New York City residents’ life expectancy, for example, is reported as 51.5 years for white males & 52.7 years for white females). Well down in the article we see that the life expectancy of black males in big cities is 37.9 years, compared to 51.55 for white males. Which is actually an improvement over past years.

Italy’s Interior Ministry orders the army to put down the civil war and prevent all demonstrations. The movement of trucks has been prohibited, since Fascists have been using them to move squadristi around the country. In Genoa, 200 Fascists evade the authorities’ “extraordinary measures” to prevent them attacking the offices of the Socialist periodical Lavoro by the clever ruse of going in through the back door, and then burn the building. Pope Pius thinks everyone just needs to pray more. Mussolini’s Popolo D’Italia says those monks the Fascists killed in Ancona were really Communists in disguise as monks.

Chinese tongs in San Francisco sign a peace treaty. The police immediately raid the conference hall and seize the document, saying they won’t open it unless the violence resumes, at which point every signer will be arrested.

William Jennings Bryan gets a haircut.

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Today -100: August 7, 1922: Beavers against the Klan!

Every publisher and author unsuccessfully prosecuted by the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice (the late Anthony Comstock’s baby) will file suit for false arrest, hoping to smother the Society in litigation. Since a recent appeal court ruling laid it open to such lawsuits, the Society has been pushing a plan for a “jury” of prudes, or whatever, to pre-censor all books, like exists for plays and, after a fashion, movies.

5 Italian provinces, including Milan and Genoa, are put under martial law. Troops with machine guns are guarding the Chamber of Deputies in Rome from possible Fascist attack. Fascists force the dissolution of Milan’s Socialist-run Municipal Council.

Atlanta Police Chief James Beavers, running for mayor, demands the other candidates, especially Councilman Walter Sims, declare their opinions on the Ku Klux Klan. Beavers doesn’t like ‘em. Sims will win the election.

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Today -100: August 6, 1922: Of hibernians, Fascists, einsteins, and crittendens

The Ancient Order of Hibernians declares war on the Ku Klux Klan. 

Violence has slowed down in some parts of Italy, but the Fascists order a general mobilization of their forces. The Facta Cabinet meets this threat by deciding to issue a politely worded appeal to the country. Facta, giving off a strong Biden-talking-about-Republicans vibe, says he trusts the sense of responsibility of the leaders (!), the sense of fraternity among the masses (!) and the goodness of the Italian people (!) to prevent a recurrence.  An anonymous Socialist deputy tells a newspaper that the Fascists are planning to march on Rome. No spoilers, anonymous Socialist deputy!

Death threats drive Albert Einstein out of Germany. Since they come from Organization C, the group that assassinated German Foreign Minister Rathenau, he’s right to take them seriously. One assumes their problem with Dr. Einstein is that he’s Jewish.

Crittenden Clark is nominated by the Missouri Republican Party to be a Justice of the Peace. He would be (and indeed will be) the first elected black judge in Missouri.

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Today -100: August 5, 1922: Evil shepherds are the worst kind

Fascists seize Milan’s Municipal Building. Gabriele d’Annunzio addresses the crowd from its balcony, because the dude loves him a balcony. He calls for unity and brotherhood: “Every workman, every peasant and every sailor led astray by evil shepherds must be convinced of this.” Because nothing says unity and brotherhood like accusing everyone who thinks differently from you of being led astray by evil shepherds.

Lots of street fighting and other violence in Genoa, Milan, and all over Italy really. Can’t tell how many dead - a few dozen? This isn’t a Fascist uprising or anything, it’s just everyday life in Italy now. The NYT’s coverage of Italy is at best beset by both-sidesism, at worst outright pro-Fascist: “Police and Fascisti are keeping the disorderly elements well in hand.” Beating up parliamentary deputies, burning anarchist clubs and chambers of labor, you know, keeping the disorderly elements well in hand.

In Texas, the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK join together to support US senatorial candidate Earle Mayfield against impeached former governor James Ferguson in the second Democratic primaries (although the Drys don’t all seem entirely happy about who they’re in bed with). Mayfield refuses to say answer questions about whether he’s a Klan member and will continue to refuse.

US Marines are sent into Teapot Dome naval oil reserve to oust a Mutual Oil Company drilling crew. The White House says the operation was done “sweetly and without conflict.”

Blood and Sand, the bullfight movie starring Rudolph Valentino and Lila Lee, premieres.

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Today -100: August 4, 1922: Ask not for whom the Bell doesn’t toll

Germany, whose currency is still in free fall, has been resisting French demands for repayment of old debts to French citizens, so France, as was the custom, is threatening not only to occupy the Rhineland, but to remove it from Germany altogether and set up a separate country, under Allied financial control. 

Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral will be marked by a one-minute silence. That is, all telephone service in the US and Canada will be suspended.

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The Irish Civil War reaches the inevitable kinky phase.

Oh dear, I wrote that before seeing the sub-hed:

Evidently, “landing forces in Dingle Bay” is the Irish euphemism for, um, striking irregulars in the rear.

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Today -100: August 3, 1922: Ask not for whom the Bell tolls

Indiana Gov. Warren McCray declares martial law over the coal miners’ strike and calls for “volunteer miners.” Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover approves plans for the federal government to take over the distribution of coal.

Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell, 75, dies. Among other things, he played with big box-kites, taught Helen Keller, and was prevented by Pres. Garfield’s idiot doctors from possibly saving his life.

And the phone thing.

Rep. Lemuel Padgett of Tennessee dies, which I only mention to point out that you don’t see the name Lemuel nearly as often these days.

The Italian Fascists are threatening to move 14,000 squadristi into Rome with “solid arguments” against the general strike which the Communists called in protest of previous Fascist violence. Someone shoots at the mayor’s car. Companies whose workers are among the strikers are politely requested by the Fascists to fire them and replace them with... Fascists. 

Mayor Jack Walton of Oklahoma City takes the Democratic nomination for governor on an anti-KKK platform.

Since the start of Prohibition, 22 federal dry agents have been killed.

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Today -100: August 2, 1922: Just the factas

Harding offered a plan to solve the railroad strike, but the railway execs reject it out of hand. They’ve been especially interested in using the strike to take away seniority from strikers. They’re also not thrilled by Harding’s demand that they follow any and all decisions of the Railroad Labor Board without question (or lawsuit).

Britain sends a note to Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Romania, Portugal, and Greece saying that Britain would like to cancel Allied countries’ debts to Britain but can’t because the US is demanding payment of British debts to it, but Britain will reduce the amount it’s demanding in proportion to US debt forgiveness. The Balfour Note says it would prefer a general cancellation of debts, including German reparations.

Luigi Facta does the impossible and forms another Italian government. It’s a mix of the same centrist parties as the last Cabinet. No Socialists or Fascists.

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Today -100: August 1, 1922: Or our revolvers will proclaim their doom

In the prosecution of publisher Thomas Seltzer by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and two other books, the defense calls Carl Van Doren, Columbia U professor and literary editor of The Nation (and uncle of the Quiz Show guy); Gilbert Seldes, editor of The Dial; the editor of the New York Medical Journal, and others to testify to the non-obscene nature of the books. Prosecutor James Wilson complains that these witnesses are “no authorities on morality or immorality” and says obscenity can only be determined by a cross-section of people unable to weasel out of jury duty.

Recently deposed Italian PM Luigi Facta is now trying to form a new government after everyone else has had a go. The Socialists have called off their threatened general strike because they are afraid of Fascist violence, with good fucking reason. Mussolini says: “Either the Socialists must cease attempting to break the peace of Italy” – the WHAT now? – “or our revolvers will proclaim their doom.” Il Popolo d’Italia, the Fascist newspapers, issues an ultimatum to both the strikers and the state itself, the Fascists threatening to stop the strike itself if it doesn’t stop, or the state stop it, within 48 hours. After that, “Fascism will claim full freedom of action and will replace the State, which will once again have shown its powerlessness.”

Greece does indeed proclaim a protectorate in Smyrna. It will be called Occidental Asia Minor. Greece claims the announcement was received with much enthusiasm by everyone in the region, regardless of race or religion, but especially Muslims. Greece actually thinks everything’s going swimmingly, and is lobbying the Allies to be allowed to occupy Constantinople. But if you’re looking for a map showing “Occidental Asia Minor,” it’s going to have to be printed before the end of the month.

The Irish Free State captures Tipperary.

Connecticut Gov. Everett Lake says there is no “serious or semi-serious” evidence of KKK activity in his state, beyond “a comic opera midnight initiation”.

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Ouch.

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Today -100: July 31, 1922: Of excommunications, Asia minors, and klandidates

Cardinal Michael Logue, the octogenarian primate of Ireland, threatens to put the town of Dundalk under excommunication for being all violent and shit.

Trotsky says Lenin’s health has improved and he’s at work again.

Vittorio Orlando gives up trying to form a government for Italy after the Socialists threaten a general strike if he includes the Nationalists, Conservatives or Fascists. Mussolini says a center-left government wouldn’t represent the will of the majority of Italians; he wants a new election.

Greece, having been told by the Allies that it won’t be allowed to occupy Constantinople, now says that areas it occupies in Asia Minor, Smyrna and environs won’t be given back to Turkey but will be turned into an autonomous state, or protectorate or something. Which is very much against the Allies’ idea of what peace should look like.

With the Oklahoma primaries coming soon, the Klan distributes model Democratic tickets to every Protestant church in Oklahoma City. The NYT only tells us their candidate for governor, but he will lose lose lose.

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Today -100: July 30, 1922: Of cockeys, unconvincing parades, and women candidates

The Italian Socialists may form the next Cabinet, everyone else having failed.

In Macon, Georgia, Deputy Sheriff Walter Byrd is shot by a black man named “Cockey” Glover, and all hell breaks loose, with lots of black people being shot at. Glover is still at large (but will be lynched).

Sarcastic Headline of the Day -100:  

Izetta Brown, former actress and widow of Democratic congresscritter William Gray Brown Jr, is running for the US Senate in West Virginia, the first such woman candidate in the South.

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Today -100: July 29, 1922: Of betrayed war ministers, hungry hungry intellectuals, lynchings in hope, assassination plans, and helicoplanes

The movie “How Kitchener Was Betrayed,” which portrays the sinking of War Secretary Earl Kitchener in 1916 as being the result of the nefarious actions of a German spy, female of course, rather than by his ship simply hitting a mine, is held up by US customs officials and will ultimately be banned at Britain’s request.

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The Fascists occupying Ravenna have taken over the federated labor unions’ building, burned a co-op and several Socialist and Republican clubs. But one Fascist gets shot in his car, and suddenly the Fasc are claiming to be the victims.

A quarrel between a black street-paver and his white boss in Hope, Arkansas, birthplace of Bill Clinton, leads to the former being lynched. The fight was over a drinking cup – possibly a whites-only drinking cup? unclear.

The French government claims that German monarchists (“Organization C,” presumably) are planning an assassination attempt on French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré. Unclear if this is based on information passed to them by the German government. 

Anna Tynan’s claim for compensation for blood poisoning in her Brooklyn job as a hat-maker is rejected because her employer refuses to tell the Workmen’s Compensation Commission what chemicals it uses. Hat-making is notoriously dangerous.

A “helicoplane” which can supposedly rise vertically and hover is tested in Britain. It travels 5 yards and rises one (1) foot into the air (which is as high as its controls can be operated from the outside, because who would dare ride inside the thing).

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Today -100: July 28, 1922: Of crashes, jazz, pleasing and serving white people, and prison escapes

Two US army reserve aviators are arraigned for violating NYC’s minimum 2,000-feet limit for flying machines. They were actually flying their military plane at 0 feet at the time they crashed in Far Rockaway, but they were pretty low even before that. If they question the ability of cops to determine if they were flying at 2,000 feet, evidence will be introduced that people could see their faces.

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James Vardaman, the former governor and US senator from Mississippi, says Woodrow Wilson only opposes his run for senator because the last time he was senator, “I performed my duties... with the intention of pleasing and serving the white people of Mississippi and not to please or flatter the occupants of the White House.”

The IRA blow a hole in the wall of Dundalk Gaol in County Louth, and 105 prisoners, I think just IRAers, escape. Half are recaptured by evening.

Italian Fascists are pouring into Ravenna to fight Socialists & Communists. Several dead. The Fascists give Socialist, Communist & Republican leaders (all of them, or just in Ravenna?) 24 hours to leave the country.

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Today -100: July 27, 1922: Of shipwrecks and Italian governments (but I repeat myself)

A British company will try to salvage gold from the wreck of the Lusitania. An American company that wanted to do the same asked the US government to protect its plans, since the ship was sunk in international waters, but the government says no.

While the German federal government has yet to use its brand new Republic Defense Act, Bavaria has used its version (which the German Cabinet calls “illegal and unconstitutional”) to ban two anti-Semitic newspapers. I guess this is in aid of the claim that Bavaria’s rejection of the federal act is about some sort of state’s rights principle rather than an attempt to protect monarchists and far-right terrorists.

In Italy, political leaders (Vittorio Orlando, Ivanoe Bonomi) are either refusing or failing to form a government. Outgoing premier Luigi Facta suggests the king get Catholic Party leader Filippo Meda, who brought down Facta’s coalition, to do it.

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Today -100: July 26, 1922: Of putting the people to work, defying Berlin, and fish civil wars

Henry Ford has a cunning plan to end civil strife in Mexico by opening motor assembly factories and “putting the people to work.”

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Bavaria has passed its own version of the central government’s Republic Defense Act and will reject any enforcement inside Bavaria of the federal law by the courts and police set up by that law. But it’s their justification that’s most startling: the Weimar constitution allows states to promulgate extraordinary measures if there’s danger coming. In this case, Bavaria is saying that that danger would be the furious reaction of Bavarians to implementation of a federal law to protect the republic from terrorists.

Former kaiser Wilhelm is suing the author Emil Ludwig in a Berlin court to prevent the publication or performance of his play Bismarck’s Dismissal, not because it’s libelous, but on the principle that there should be no portrayal of his ex-highness during his lifetime. Willy’s real complaint is that Ludwig makes Bismarck look better than him (his lawyer is named Dr. Frankfurter, by the way).  (Willy will win the case).

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Today -100: July 25, 1922: Of independence, republic defense, and rum-running

The Philippines now has three political parties, the latest being the Collectivist Party (Partido Nacionalista-Colectivista) of Manuel Quezon, president of the Senate and future president of the country. All 3 parties want independence.

The German state of Bavaria is resisting implementation within its borders of the federal Republic Defense Act (Republikschutzgesetz) which was just passed in response to the assassination of Walther Rathenau and is aimed at terrorist groups. The Bavarian governing coalition breaks up over this stance, and the left is threatening a general strike. The ability of the central government to get the Bavarian military to enforce the law is questionable.

The US asks Britain to help suppress rum-running from its Caribbean colonies. Britain has no treaty obligation to do so, and I’m not sure any non-US law is being broken.

And isn’t “rum-running” a rather delightful phrase? Say it out loud: rum-running rum-running rum-running.

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Today -100: July 24, 1922: Of klandidates and hearses

The big winners in the Texas Democratic Party primary (votes not all counted yet): the Ku Klux Klan and the candidates it supports. Among the latter: Earle Mayfield, who is well ahead of former impeached governor James Ferguson and will indeed be the next US senator; incumbent Gov. Pat Neff; and many down-ballot races.

After some act(s) of violence, Britain is already threatening to take back control of Egypt.

A hearse transporting a corpse from Long Island to Manhattan is stopped five separate times by prohibition agents sure it was carrying booze.

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Today -100: July 23, 1922: Of flatheads, wool battles, masks, and radio

Headline of the Day -100:  

What the hell is going on in the Senate?

KKK “Acting Wizard” E.Y. Clarke orders klansmen to refrain from wearing masks, except in their lodge rooms. This is in response to Gov. Thomas Hardwick of Georgia’s threat to ban masks.

The German Reichstag passes laws allowing women into the legal profession and exempting women employees of the federal government from disciplinary measures because of unwed motherhood.

In May, NYC metropolitan area radio stations agreed to divide up daily broadcasting hours between them. The popular (and high-wattage) WJZ, Newark refused to go along, and the other stations are demanding it be forced off the air. This wouldn’t be an issue if the Commerce Dept didn’t restrict radio stations to 360-meter waves.

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Today -100: July 22, 1922: Of aerial traffic cops, arsenic, and limericks

The NYPD’s aviation dept will start sending up planes to pull over private planes violating the new minimum flying height of 2,000 feet, “using force if necessary.”

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They say it’s so they can poison boll weevils cheaply. A likely story.

The Irish Free State captures Limerick & Waterford from the rebels.

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Today -100: July 21, 1922: To any reaction we will answer with insurrection

Two men are executed in Sing Sing. One of the official witnesses is a blind man who wants to “sense the feeling” of an execution.

In the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Mussolini says of the prospective new Cabinet, “Soon the Fascisti will have to decide whether to continue their struggle in a legal or insurrectionary form.” He says no government will be able to govern Italy “should machine guns against the Fascisti figure in its program. We have numerous disciplined well-organized forces. We will react with extreme violence against any attempt to oppress us.” “To any reaction we will answer with insurrection.”

The NYT thinks the next Italian government may not have the same problem with violence: “Communists and Fascisti fight hard enough, but their energies are usually exhausted after a few days and they go home till the next inspiration moves them.” So much New York Timesiosity in that combination of ethnic stereotype and both-sidesism.

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Today -100: July 20, 1922: Of domestic peace and shylocks

Italian PM Luigi Facta loses a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies when the Catholic party turns against him. Evidently he’s failed to secure domestic peace. Mostly because he hasn’t tried.

Russian delegate to the Hague Conference Maxim Litvinov tells an AP reporter between acts of a gala performance put on for the conference of “Shylock,” which... yeah, that Russia won’t attend any more conferences.

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