Today -100: October 10, 1922: Of queens and smooty prayers

The British Labour Party demands new elections, responding to the possibility that Lloyd George’s Near East policies will lead Britain into war with Turkey. 

When Princess Hermin of Reuss-Greiz marries former kaiser Wilhelm, they’re planning to call her Queen Wilhelmina of Prussia. Wilhelm and Wilhelmina, like Pinky and Pinkie in Adam’s Rib, isn’t that cute? No word yet on whether Germany will be banning the “queen” from entering Prussia like Wilhelm is.

Sen. Reed Smoot says First Lady Florence Harding recovered from her illness because of Mormon prayers.

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Today -100: October 9, 1922: I’ve had enough

Uncle Joe Cannon, former speaker of the House, is retiring after spending 46 of the last 50 years in Congress (a record). “I’ve had enough,” says the 86-year-old, who attended the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Greece says it will accept the decisions of the Allies at the Mudania conference – provided they’re unanimous. Which is kind of a big condition, but Greece does seem to have accepted, maybe, that it’s lost Thrace. Eastern Thrace, anyway.

The World Series is won by the New York team.

WJZ, Newark’s news leader, invites the NY Republican and Democratic candidates for governor and US senator to speak on the talking-type wireless.

Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) premieres in NY, with Spencer Tracy as a robot. The word robot now enters the English language.

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Today -100: October 8, 1922: A little of what you fancy

Although the assassins of Germany Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau killed themselves rather than be captured, 15 of their alleged conspirators are on trial, and some of them got sick. Naturally, rumors are spreading that they were given poisoned chocolates to stop them implicating high-up reactionaries. (Update: actually this is true).

It is discovered that insulin might help fight diabetes, but it is very expensive.

British music hall singer Marie Lloyd dies at 52. She was known for such songs as “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery,” “When you Wink the Other Eye,” “Twiggy Vous,” “A Little of What You Fancy” (below), “My Old Man Said Follow the Van” and other slightly naughty songs. She was almost refused entry into the US in 1913 because she was traveling with her the man who was not yet her 3rd husband; the labor secretary intervened to let her in.

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Today -100: October 7, 1922: Of booze cruises, and fictitious governments

Harding and Attorney General Daugherty ban the sale of alcohol on American ships even outside US territorial waters. The order also bans foreign ships entering US ports with alcohol even as cargo not destined for the US.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Mussolini says “In Italy there exists two governments – a fictitious one, run by [Prime Minister] Facta, and a real one, run by the Fascisti. The first of these must give way to the second.” There has been “much talk” of the Fascists occupying Rome.

Mayors of a bunch of towns near Boston say they won’t allow the KKK to operate or hold meetings in their towns.

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Today -100: October 6, 1922: Winner takes 3/5

Mussolini and the Fascists demand general elections before the end of the year, and that any party receiving a majority of votes, like they think they would, get 3/5ths of the parliamentary seats. The Fascists got 35 of the 535 seats in the May 1921 elections, which was fought on proportional representation.

The second game of the World Series (my money’s on the New York team) is called on account of darkness, thus ending in a tie, infuriating the fans, who accuse the owners of a scheme to wring more money from the series. So the teams hastily agree to turn over the game’s takings to New York charities, disabled soldiers and the like.

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Today -100: October 5, 1922: We are still the biggest lot of talkers that ever lived

Talks are beginning over the Near East. Both sides want the Allies to send troops to Thrace to keep the other side out until it is turned over to Turkey.

The Italian Socialist Party convention votes to purge moderates willing to work within the system as opposed to working to overthrow it. Can’t wait to see which method establishes the Socialist utopia in Italy.

The Italian Fascists occupy Trent and Bolzano, both new additions to Italy taken from Austria. They oust Julius Perathoner, who has been Bolzano’s mayor since 1895.

Kansas Gov. Henry Allen insists his Industrial Court doesn’t infringe on free speech. “We are still the biggest lot of talkers that ever lived,” he says. He says he told shopkeepers that putting placards in their windows in support of the rail strike was illegal under the anti-picket law, and then had the editor of the Emporia Gazette arrested for saying that that was a violation of free speech.

Swedish voters reject prohibition 924,874 to 889,078.

Rebecca Latimer Felton says “I shall not strive to win glory in statesmanship” in, um, the one day she will spend as senator when the Senate is not in session. She also talks some shit about flappers.

The NYT praises the appointment of Felton, saying that Georgia “speaks with no jarring note of sex antagonism,” compared to the condition Alva Belmont attached to her gift of a headquarters building to the National Woman’s Party barring men from holding office or receiving a salary from the NWP. The NYT considers that “arbitrary discrimination against one-half the sum total of the Creator’s handiwork.” When will men catch a break? The NYT invokes “Southern chivalry” because of course it does.

A couple of days ago furrier Abraham Seligman was hit by an arrow through the window of his 3rd-floor 5th-Avenue shop. Turns out Douglas Fairbanks, in town to promote Robin Hood, was playing with bows and arrows with his entourage on the roof of the Ritz-Carlton and... something something. The next day Fairbanks read about Seligman in the newspaper and visited him, after which Seligman mysteriously was no longer interested in pressing charges.

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Today -100: October 4, 1922: It’s going to thrill the nation

Rebecca Latimer Felton accepts the appointment to fill Georgia’s US Senate for a day. “It’s going to thrill the nation,” she predicts. Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party says women throughout the world will be pleased by this recognition of the new position of women. Paul mentions Felton’s work for women but not that it included repeatedly advocating protecting white women by lynching as many “ravening human beasts” as necessary.

The Irish Free State offers an amnesty to rebels who turn in their arms and stand down by October 15th. Until October 15th: party!

The Italian Socialist Party convention, which has been bitterly divided on whether to 1) join the government or 2) have a revolution, devolves into fisticuffs.

The NYT notes Pres. Harding & SecState Charles Evans Hughes are reportedly “dumfounded” by the expectation of many people, especially churchfolk, that the US should intervene in Near Eastern affairs, to protect Christians if nothing else. I mean, don’t they realize that Harding was elected on a platform of isolation?

Henry Ford plans to start making cars in China.

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Today -100: October 3, 1922: Of empty honors, dead Alexes, modest villas, Borgia rings, and lynchings

In what the NYT calls an “empty honor,” Georgia Gov. Thomas Hardwick will appoint Rebecca Latimer Felton to the US Senate to fill the seat vacated by Thomas Watson’s death. He’s already offered it to Watson’s widow, but she is expected to (and will) decline. Hardwick is running for the seat, so this is mostly a bid for the female vote. Felton would be senator for one (1) day, when the Senate isn’t supposed to be in session, thus the emptiness of the honor. Felton, who is 87, is the widow of a congresscritter whose campaigns she managed. She  be the first woman senator and the last senator who had owned slaves. She’s a loud proponent of lynching. It will be nearly a decade before there is another woman senator.

Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  

Disappointing because at first I thought it must be about that monkey whose bite took the life of Greece’s King Alexander a couple of years ago denying the whole thing. Turns out the story is actually that the Hungarian News Agency has retracted its report that there was a revolution in Yugoslavia and Yug. King Alexander had been assassinated.

Ex-king Constantine of Greece has decided to live in Sicily in a “modest” rented villa, because it’s cheap and he’s claiming poverty, as was the custom with deposed kings, although we know he moved his investments and the queen’s jewels out of the country in preparation for just such an event.

Isadora Duncan and her entourage are let into the US after a couple hours’ interrogation by immigration officials. “[T]hey wanted to know what I looked like when I danced. I said I could not tell because I have never seen myself dance.”

A curio collector who bought a 15th-century ring in the shape of a snake from the Borgia period is poisoned by it but not killed, yet anyway, presumably because the poison weakened over time. The ghosts of the Borgias are disappointed.

After a mob in Montgomery, Alabama are told that the guy they’re looking for was sent to another jail, they grab a black fireman (presumably any black guy will do) from his home and lynch him instead.

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Today -100: October 2, 1922: The soul of Russia and the soul of America are about to understand each other

The Prohibition Party asks New York Gov. Nathan Miller (R) if he would accept the Prohibition Party nomination for re-election. He’s not a prohibitionist, but he does stand for enforcing all laws, which is good enough for them. Miller says no, he’s not a prohibitionist and doesn’t want to be mistaken for one. They’ll wind up endorsing him anyway.

The Anti-Saloon League tells its Illinois members to just ignore next month’s referendum on beer and light wines, which the head of its Ill. branch says is just a referendum on obedience of the law.

The NY Republican state convention adopts a plank for equal rights for women.

Dancer Isadora Duncan and her husband, Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, plus a secretary and her children, arrive in the US, but immigration officers order them kept on the ship until a board of inquiry decides whether to allow them into the country. She denies coming to disseminate communist propaganda, she’s all about the art: “We believe the soul of Russia and the soul of America are about to understand each other.”

While sticking up a Dublin pub, robbers shoot Pres. Cosgrave’s father dead when he grabs one of their guns. This isn’t the pub owned by Pres. Cosgrave himself that was robbed last week, but another pub owned by some relative.

The NYC Post Office is reopening the old pneumatic mail tube system shut down by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Cool.

The medical commissioner for insanity in Cook County, Dr. James Hall, says the number of people going crazy in Chicago has doubled since prohibition.

Headline of the Day -100:  

“Skillfully severed”.

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Today -100: October 1, 1922: Being a king is no fun these days

Ex-king Constantine (or Prince Flukesbouren, as he now styles himself), ex-queen Sophie, and still-prince Nicholas leave Greece on a steamer for Sicily. Conny plans to live in Italy, as Switzerland and (allegedly) Britain have told him no. He says “being a king is no fun these days.”

Russia introduces conscription for all men aged 20 to 40 for terms between 1½ and 4½ years, depending on the military branch.

Speaking of former emperors, the NYT relays the hot goss about the minor royal family that Wilhelm will be marrying into. It seems Princess Hermin’s father Heinrich XXII insisted on personally administering corporal punishment to public school children of both sexes at the palace, and that her brother Heinrich XXIV is deaf, blind and “imbecilic,” the latter possibly because of the eye operation that also rendered him blind because his mother insisted it be done while she held him on her lap and she... flinched.

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Today -100: September 30, 1922: Perfect freedom of the limbs

The military government in Greece arrests several members of the ousted government and will put them on trial for treason for the crappy job they did in the Asia Minor military campaign.

Britain and Turkey are exchanging ultimatums & offers to meet, as was the custom.

The New York Democratic Party state convention names Al Smith as candidate for governor, William Randolph Hearst as candidate for nothing, and president of the NYC Board of Health Royal Copeland, who did such a bad job during the Spanish Flu, for US Senate. After Hearst is rejected, NYC Mayor John Hylan stalks out of the convention and goes home.

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Today -100: September 29, 1922: I wish to be considered as dead

I could have sworn the Turks promised to respect the neutral zone around the Straits just a couple of days ago. Anyway, the Turks occupy the neutral zone around the Straits.

There are rumors that Mohammed VI has abdicated as Sultan of Turkey. No, that’s still a little ways off.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That would do it. (Greece, by the way, not Turkey). Troops enter Athens and form a “revolution committee” to take temporary charge of the government and restart the war against Turkey in Thrace. New king George is sworn in. Old king Constantine might go to Denmark, where he’s a prince. The US has also been rumored. Former prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos is still in Paris, showing no signs of returning to save Greece. He says “I wish to be considered as dead” when asked what role he might play.

The Michigan Democratic Party Convention declines to endorse Henry Ford for president in 1924, because that’s two freaking years from now. 

John Sumner of the NY Society for the Suppression of Vice still wants to ban the Satyricon, maybe shopping around for a more congenial magistrate. He complains that someone repeating the language in it on a street corner could be jailed for 6 months. He further complains that the purchasers of the Satyricon “are not limited, as is claimed, to highly moral, intellectual and sophisticated readers.” Why, anyone with $20 can buy it. If anyone really has to read it, there are copies in libraries under lock and key – in Latin.

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Today -100: September 28, 1922: It took me back to school days once more

I guess the people have said they don’t want him any more. King Constantine, after first offering to go to Thrace to lead the Greek Army, abdicates the Greek throne in favor of Crown Prince George, but his wishes for the succession may not prevail, some preferring Prince Christopher; for now, there’s no king. And who will be prime minister? There’s a demonstration in favor of exile former PM Eleutherios Venizelos; the army kindly offers to form a government.

No doubt a complete coincidence, but the abdication of King Constantine is followed immediately by news that his niece, Princess Olga, and Crown Prince Fred of Denmark have broken off their engagement. They only met twice before announcing the engagement, which “gave rise to the belief that it was a case of love at first sight” in people who don’t understand how royal marriages work. She’ll have to settle for a Yugoslav prince.

The NY Society for the Suppression of Vice prosecutes the publisher of The Satyricon and once again loses in court. The magistrate, who’s done an extraordinary amount of research in coming to this judgment – “it took me back to school days once more” – suggests that the law didn’t intend to produce censorship of literature from the first century AD. The publisher, who glories in the name Horace Liveright and whose attorney is Arthur Garfield Hays, a man named after three mediocre presidents (really), plans to sue the Vice Society for libel.

The Irish Free State government will set up military courts with the power to inflict the death penalty.

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Today -100: September 27, 1922: Of Schrödinger’s king and kkkommies

The Irish Parliament is discussing a new Irish constitution. It rejects Gavan Duffy’s amendment to omit any mention of the British king.

The Irish government is thinking about creating a prison camp for Republican rebels on some island.

The AP reports that King Constantine says he will stay on the Greek throne “until the people say they want me no more”; Central News reports that he has abdicated. So the NYT just sticks the two contradictory reports in a single story and lets them fight it out.

Albert Einstein, who fled death threats in Germany last month, is going on a 6-month lecture tour of Japan.

Michigan authorities, after a raid on a Communist meeting in the woods, claim to have seized papers showing Communist plans to infiltrate unions . Okay, fine. And the Ku Klux Klan. Ummmmmm?

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Today -100: September 26, 1922: Of bail, kletters, stickups, memoirs, and paparazzi

A couple of hundred miners, I guess, in Herrin, Illinois were indicted for murders and rioting and whatnot during the coal strike. Unionists and the mayor of Herrin, A.T. Pace, went around to businesses and raised millions of dollars of bail for several dozen of them. Many more don’t need bail at the moment, because they haven’t shown up at court.

The Pittsburgh Ku Klux Klan order the local federal prohibition agent to raid a particular saloon Saturday, with more to be named later. Agent Hawker, for that is his (awesome) name, says he can’t do that without actual evidence to support a search warrant. This is evidently the first time dry agents have received a Klan letter, or kletter as they probably call it.

“The allied decision to deprive Greece of Eastern Thrace has caused great consternation in Athens.”

The Dublin pub owned by Irish Pres. William Cosgrave is robbed by 8 armed Republicans while Cosgrave is present, which sounds like a sub-plot on Peaky Blinders.

Former kaiser Wilhelm’s memoirs are being serialized in Germany (and the NYT), and monarchist/right-wing Germans are upset that he’s pissed all over Bismarck’s memory. For them, it’s like if Trump made disparaging comments about Reagan; they just hate to see mama and papa fight.

A plane trying to take pictures of the estate of Wilhelm’s fiancee, the Princess Hermin of Reuss-Greiz, crashes and the princess has to take care of the pilots and an American reporter.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: September 25, 1922: Of sikis and fezes

A Parisian crowd at the world light heavyweight match of Georges Carpentier and Battling Siki force officials to retract the referee’s decision giving the win to the unconscious Carpentier because of alleged fouling (tripping) by Siki (photos show he didn’t trip him, but Carpentier did commit several fouls). What’s interesting is that Siki is black, from Senegal, but the crowd preferred fair play over race, in contrast, for example, to the riots following the 1910 defeat in the US of James Jeffries by Jack Johnson.

Siki was supposed to throw the match but changed his mind sometime during the fight. Ernest Hemingway, one of the audience members, partly based his 1927 short story “Fifty Grand” on this fight.

The changing circumstances of Turkish military victory has brought a major increase in the demand for fezes in Constantinople. They’re even having to import them from Austria.

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Today -100: September 24, 1922: Of thraces, war guilt, and prop guns

Britain, France and Italy graciously grant eastern Thrace to Turkey, even Constantinople, while the Straits would be under League of Nations guardianship (of course the League lacks a navy, so in event of trouble it would have to call on Britain) (Turkey, incidentally, is not a member of the League). This would all require a new treaty to replace the Treaty of Sèvres enforced upon Turkey at the end of the Great War. The Allies are inviting Turkey to talks, and pointedly not inviting Russia.

Bulgaria will have a referendum on the fate of the government ministers who got the country into the Great War. If 50% of voters find them guilty, they will be exiled for 10 years. If 60%, they will be imprisoned for 10 years. If 70%, they’ll get life.

During filming of the movie Quicksands, Helene Chadwick accidentally shoots Noah Beery (father of Noah Beery, Jr., who played James Garner’s father, despite their mere 14-year age gap, in The Rockford Files) (I may have gotten distracted on imdb) with a prop gun that turned out not to be a prop gun. The movie, now lost, was written by Howard Hawks and Oliver Hardy.

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Today -100: September 23, 1922: It would be more fun if they were defending Zeus-worshipping civilization

Palestinians will boycott the Legislative Council elections decreed by the British, and Jewish rabbis are complaining that Muslim courts are granted more powers than the Jewish religious courts.

The Cable Act becomes law, allowing an American woman who marries a non-citizen to keep her citizenship if her husband is eligible to become a citizen (i.e., not an Asian or an anarchist or a polygamist). Non-citizen women who marry US citizens will have to naturalize independently of their husbands. This reverses a 1907 law that made a married woman’s citizenship status depend entirely on that of her husband. Various remaining discriminatory provisions will be dealt with by amendments from time to time through 1934.

Two white men are indicted for being part of a mob that lynched two black men, the first time this has happened (the indictment, not the lynching, obvs) in southeastern Georgia (Liberty County, no less).

Greece, which just badly lost a war with Turkey, threatens to go to war with Turkey if it invades Thrace. Greece says Thrace is part of Greece and the massacres in Smyrna shows that “Greece is defending Christian civilization.”

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Today -100: September 22, 1922: Too many men are going to college

Ford plants reopen after being closed 5 days, Henry Ford thinking he’s made some sort of point about the coal & railroad strikes.

Rumors say that the Turkish nationalists are about to issue an ultimatum to the Allies to get out of Thrace in 48 hours. Regardless of the truth of that, they are threatening to declare war on Britain if it interferes with the movement of Turkish troops into Thrace. The Morning Post (London) says British troops in Constantinople will respond to disturbances with “concentrated fire of machine guns and Lewis guns which the undisciplined Turkish mobs could not confront for long.”

Dartmouth College President E. M. Hopkins tells the opening assembly of the academic year that “Too many men are going to college” and it should be reserved for the “aristocracy of brains, made up of men intellectually alert and intellectually eager... if democracy is to become a quality product rather than simply a quantity one”.

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Today -100: September 21, 1922: Of bonuses, klandidates, sabers, and diplomats

The Senate upholds Harding’s veto of the Bonus Bill by 4 votes, after the House voted to override it by a large margin (258-54). Many senators who supposedly support the bonus choose not to show up.

Walter Sims wins the Democratic primary for mayor of Atlanta. He is the KKK’s candidate, though it is not known if he’s a member. He is currently on the City Council, where he fought to fire a teacher for being Catholic (the article doesn’t say if he succeeded) and introduced an ordinance to bar the races mixing in church services, which the mayor vetoed.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Literally. Not especially subtle. They’re still clearing the bodies but Standard Oil is already back at work.

Harding appoints Lucile Atcherson secretary of an (undecided) embassy or legation, the first female diplomatic officer. The State Department will not take this lying down.

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