Today -100: October 30, 1922: To Rome

Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel calls on Benito Mussolini, 39, to form a government. The Fascists’ demands escalated rather quickly over the last few days from 5 Cabinet ministers to 6 to complete control. And now they’ll have it. Mussolini is on his way to Rome to meet the king (he’s been making statements recently repudiating his former anti-monarchical views).

We are told that France’s “gravest fear” about the Fascist takeover is that there might be “difficulties” with Yugoslavia. The Fascists are again talking about reclaiming Fiume (Mussolini met with Poet-Aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio yesterday), the Swiss canton of Ticino, and even Malta and Tunisia.

Kansas Gov. Henry Allen (R) orders the attorney general to expel all Ku Klux Klan officials from the state. They didn’t apply for a charter, and they probably do other bad things.

The incoming class at Columbia includes a 12-year-old who wants to be a lawyer, seven 15-year-olds and 56 16-year-olds. It would have been helpful to know the total size of the freshman class.

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Today -100: October 29, 1922: Wherein is revealed the cause of all the abnormality in our daily life

Italian King Victor Emmanuel rejects the government’s request that he sign a state of siege. And that’s it for representative democracy, folks. Fascists are mobilizing at various locations, but have not actually started to march on Rome.

At former kaiser Wilhelm’s wedding, there will be no presents.

Henry Ford says he has “no hatred in my heart for the Jew.” So that’s good. “I do not blame the Jew money-lender for bunking humanity just as long as humanity lets him get away with it.” But “the Jew” is responsible for all the wars and “he is the cause of all the abnormality in our daily life because he is the money maniac.” But, you know, no hatred.

New British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law’s favorite drink is hot milk. Really, that’s everything you need to know about him.

Headline of the Day -100:  

3-year-old with a shotgun. Less interesting than the headline promised.

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Today -100: October 28, 1922: Of evil Cabinet spirits and mingoes

Italian King Victor Emmanuel asks Luigi Facta and his Cabinet to stay in office as caretakers until a new government, whatever that may be, steps in. 4 ministers, the anti-Fascist ones, have definitively resigned anyway. At the Fascist convention, Mussolini referred to Facta as “that kindly but useless gentleman” (it’s funny cuz it’s true) and the 4 ministers as “the evil spirits of the present Cabinet”. There will need to be some Fascist participation in the next government, or they will make the country (more) ungovernable.

The United Mine Workers gives up the Mingo strike after more than 2 years, facing a third winter of strikers living in tents and violent suppression by the state of West Virginia.

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Today -100: October 27, 1922: The march without actual marching

The Fascists merely threaten a March on Rome, and the Facta government resigns. To be fair, they weren’t really that enthusiastic about resisting Mussolini (think Ted Cruz to the duce’s Trump) and the army and police might not have been willing to stop the Fascists. The resignation doesn’t necessarily mean that the next government will be Fascist; at this stage, no one knows what it means.

Greece arrests Prince Andrew at Corfu for his role in the military disaster against Turkey. Also arrested: a general, the former foreign minister, the former interior minister, and the former governor of Thrace.

Éamon de Valera summons a republican alt-Dáil, which meets secretly and calls on de Valera to resume the presidency.

Following a speech given by William Jennings Bryan Sunday in St Paul, a bunch of Twin Cities Christian pastors call for action to remove the teaching of evolution (“a program of infidelity masquerading under the name of science”) in tax-supported schools, including the state university.

Bonar Law is running on a truly exciting platform: abolishing the Cabinet Secretariat and transferring British League of Nations representation to the Foreign Office. Oh, and abolishing the Pensions Ministry.

The NYT thinks Harding will replace retiring Supreme Court Justice William R. Day, who was appointed by Roosevelt, with a Democrat, because it’s customary for the Court to have at least 3 members of the opposition party and the NYT thinks there’s only one D. justice, because they’ve forgotten about Brandeis. Also, Justice Mahlon Pitney has had a stroke and is expected to resign/die. 

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Today -100: October 26, 1922: Of threats and bulwarks

Mussolini concludes the Fascist convention by saying that if the government isn’t given “peacefully” to the Fascists they will take it by force.

The British Labour Party issues its election manifesto: reducing German reparations, a stronger League of Nations, self-government for India, independence for Egypt, shifting taxation to the rich, nationalization of the mines, etc. It denies being for revolution, saying that indeed the Labour program “is the best bulwark against violent upheaval and class wars.”

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Today -100: October 25, 1922: Either we are allowed to govern, or we will seize power by marching on Rome

Mussolini tells the 1st annual convention of the Fascist Party that the government has given in to his demands for elections, soon, under new rules. He says he wouldn’t join the cabinet himself, but has demanded for the Fascists the ministries of war, the navy, foreign affairs, labor, and public works. He says democracy needs to be superseded by super-democracy, whatever that means.

The US is banning ships entering US ports with alcohol onboard, but British law requires steamers to carry a gallon of brandy for every 100 steerage passengers. For medicinal purposes, obvs.

Boy, Bonar Law’s Cabinet sure contains a lot of viscounts this and marquises that and dukes of whatever. Which means that the colonial secretary, for example, won’t be in the Commons to defend the government’s colonial policies.

Ten IWW members are being tried in Sacramento under California’s Criminal Syndicalism Law. A former aide to Big Bill Haywood claims that during the war Wobblies tried to send poisoned canned goods to American soldiers in France.

Woodrow Wilson will be able to vote in next month’s election after all. New Jersey, a state in which he no longer resides, will allow him to vote as a (very) absentee voter. He’s registered at a one-room apartment in Princeton he once lived in but which is now occupied by a student.

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Today -100: October 24, 1922: Of mad counsels, Communists v. Restaurants, and klandidates

Andrew Bonar Law (who lived the first 12 years of his life in New Brunswick) is now prime minister of the United Kingdom. There will be a general election on November 15th. That’s a Wednesday. The Labour Party justifiably thinks that the choice of a weekday is intended to suppress the Labour vote; Conservatives say Wednesday is more convenient for small shopkeepers.

Lord Arthur Balfour praises Lloyd George and says the Conservative MPs who voted to break up the Coalition took “mad counsels.” Balfour was the last Tory prime minister.

A rumor, which the Berlin Police took seriously, spread that “Communist gangsters” would attack fancy restaurants. They didn’t. Another rumor is that there will be a Red Revolution™ on November 9th. (Spoiler Alert: there won’t be).

When Klan-backed Earle Mayfield won the Texas Democratic primary for US senator, anti-kluxers quickly adopted George Peddy as a fusion candidate (independent D’s plus R’s), but the Democratic secretary of state refused to let his name appear on the ballot. Peddy’s lawyers say the Klan has absorbed the D. party in Texas, so Mayfield is not the D. candidate. Federal judges uphold the secretary of state’s decision. A second lawsuit aims to keep Mayfield’s name from appearing as the Democratic candidate, Mayfield claims he only attended one Klan meeting in Dallas, not 3 like a witness had said. So that’s okay then.

Harding endorses Peddy in a statement that condemns the Klan without specifically naming them.

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth suggests responding to the collapse of the mark by defaulting on reparations. He has taken to repeating the slogan “First bread, then reparations.” Speaking of bread, the price is about to double, thanks to the centrist bourgeois parties in the Reichstag caring more about Prussian landowners and other agrarian types than they do about workers.

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Today -100: October 23, 1922: Of Liberal Free Traders, and what it’s okay and not okay to do on a Sunday

The realignment of parties in Britain is confusing to the electors, but also to some politicians. It’s more than a little unclear what party or party splinter Prime Minister David Lloyd George is representing or leading. Will he create a new Center Party? (Spoiler Alert: he won’t). Churchill (in bed recovering from appendicitis surgery) says he will “stand as a Liberal and a Free Trader, but I shall ask the electors to authorize me to co-operate freely with the sober-minded and progressive Conservatives in defending the lasting and central interests of this realm and its wide empire against the very dangerous attacks now about to be leveled upon them by the Socialist and Communist forces, as well as against the almost equally serious menace of downright reaction from the opposite quarter.” We’ll see if the good people of Dundee want to be represented by a member of the Liberal/Free-Trader/Free-Cooperater-with-sober-Tory Party (Spoiler: they won’t). Within a couple of years he’ll rejoin the Tories, performing the rare death-defying double-ratting (having left the Tories for the Liberals in 1904).

And no one knows how strong the Labour Party, which not having been part of the Coalition doesn’t face the messy splits in the Lib & Tory parties,  might be, and it’s creating a lot of anxiety. They’ve won a lot of by-elections, suggesting they’re much more popular than in the last election, they’re much better organized, and they plan to put up candidates in 400 constituencies.

Seven hooded and masked Ku Kluxers invade the First Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey and ask the pastor to read their platform – patriotism, pure womanhood, etc. Which he does. After they leave, the pastor says he agrees with the Klan platform and is fine with the incursion.

Samuel Rzeschewski, 10-year-old chess prodigy, is arrested as a juvenile delinquent for taking part in a Sunday entertainment, a benefit for the National Hebrew Orphanage in which he was to play 5 opponents simultaneously.

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Today -100: October 22, 1922: Of radios, days, fish, and fairies

Henry  Ford plans to establish 400 radio stations throughout the US, so he can disseminate his anti-Semitic opinions, I’m assuming.

San Francisco electrician Charles Buckley, who killed a 4-year-old girl while driving drunk, offers her parents his own 5-year-old girl. They decline the offer.

Supreme Court Justice William R. Day (a Roosevelt appointee) will resign in order to be umpire (I guess that’s the official term) on the German-American claims commission.

Headline of the Day -100:  

They only find out it was the king and two princesses who rescued them after giving them the fish.

A review of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies. Dude still believes in the obviously fake Cottingley Fairies photos, years later.

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Today -100: October 21, 1922: The burden is off my shoulders and my sword is in my hand

Lloyd George tells a crowd seeing him off at the train station, “I am a free man. The burden is off my shoulders and my sword is in my hand.” He portrays his position as country v. party: “When the country gets through its troubles we will have the dog fight, but until then let us stand by the old country.”

German Chancellor Joseph Wirth tells the Reichstag that there are at least two murder plots against him.

A mob in Camden, Tennessee seizes a father and son who were convicted of manslaughter and lynches them. The article fails to mention their race.

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Today -100: October 20, 1922: Of coalitions and enigmas

Lloyd George is out. Many had thought that LG, slippery weasel that he is, would figure out a way to hang on a bit longer. The Tories worried that they wouldn’t be able to pull out of the Coalition without splitting their party between Cexiters (a term I have just made up) and those, like their leader Austen Chamberlain, who wanted the Coalition to continue. But the vote of Tory MPs at the Carlton Club to withdraw is unexpectedly overwhelming. Chamberlain will soon resign as party leader if he hasn’t already. Lloyd George recommends to the king that he call on Andrew Bonar Law to form a government, but Law isn’t yet his party’s leader and says he can’t do it until he’s sure the Unionist Party is behind him. I mean, Tory MPs might not want to form a solely Tory government, who knows, gonna have to ask them. Once ensconced in Number Ten, Law might call a general election, but isn’t obliged to do so (see also Johnson, Boris).

Negotiations between Mussolini and former prime minister Giovanni Giolitti fail, and Mussolini and poet-aviator Gabriele d’Annunzio sign an agreement uniting their forces.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Yup, that’s Ohio, sooooooo enigmatic.

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Today -100: October 19, 1922: Of hateful, venomous by-products, disenfranchisements, and hoods & nighties

Friedrich Ebert was elected provisional president of Germany in 1919, provisional because the Weimar constitution hadn’t gone into effect yet, and he’s still provisional. The Reichstag was supposed to set an election, but never did. Now, it decides to extend Ebert’s term until 1925. Ebert actually wants the election that was supposed to occur in December, which he’d certainly win, to go ahead but some centrists are afraid of a campaign, “with all its hateful, venomous by-products” (hateful, venomous by-products are the worst kind of by-products). Skipping the election will take a constitutional amendment. They’ll do that next week; evidently amending the constitution isn’t that difficult.

Woodrow Wilson is no longer able to vote since he lives in D.C. and the New Jersey election laws that let him vote in Princeton while he was president have been changed.

Harding tells the Allied Christian Societies that the US will never depart from the 18th Amendment.

Milwaukee’s Socialist mayor Daniel Hoan responds to Charles Fowler, founder of Lanier University in Atlanta, which he sold to the Ku Klux Klan, rejecting Fowler’s kind offer to help Milwaukee maintain law and order (why Milwaukee ? fuck if I know), saying he’d make Milwaukee the “hottest place this side of hell” for any Kluxer who attacked anyone in his town, adding “for you to come here from the State where lynching is the most popular outdoor sport to tell our people that they need this organization, with its hoods and nighties, to insure law and order is in itself ridiculous.”

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Today -100: October 18, 1922: Of absent professors, burning blimps, beebs, and robins hood

Italian PM Luigi Facta is standing on the railroad station waiting for a train to take him to the king where he plans to hand in his resignation when he receives a mysterious phone call that causes him to change his mind. His minister of war has been talking to people and it is believed either that former prime minister Giovanni Giolitti has said he won’t take the job again or that the Fascists have refused to participate in a coalition government. 

Belgian historian Henri Pirenne has just discovered that he’s been a Princeton professor of history for the last 6 years. Princeton appointed him in the hopes that it would get Germany to release him from captivity, which it did not. But it never told him. Or paid him.

Another US Army airship, the C-2, the army’s largest blimp, catches on fire in San Antonio after experiencing an unexpected “strong puff” of wind on takeoff. The C-2 previously made the first transcontinental trip by an airship. Most of its crew injure themselves jumping to the ground, but no one’s killed this time. Once again, hydrogen and airships prove not to be a good combination.

The BBC is founded, sort of.  British Broadcasting Company Ltd. Financed by a royalty on BBC radios, but radioheads (wirelessheads?) built their own, so it will go bankrupt and the British government will use its assets to create the Beeb we know today. It will go on the air next month.

Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, premieres. Too much “Earl of Huntingdon” and the Crusades, not enough “Robin Hood” and Sherwood Forest, if you ask me.

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Today -100: October 17, 1922: Of liberty, chicken oaths, and limits

Theodore Schierlman, mayor of Liberty, Kansas, is kidnapped by 15 Klansmen, taken out of town and whipped for having spoken against the Klan. His lawyer says he will sue the town for $100,000 under the Kansas mob law.

Judge Talley of General Sessions (NYC), after a Chinese witness is sworn in, asks the interpreter how much the oath “really means to a Chinese.” The interpreter explains that it would only count if the witness placed their hand on a dying sacrificed chicken. The judge doesn’t go along with it.

Britain rejects a proposal from the US to extend the 3-mile territorial limit to 12 miles, within which the US could search ships for booze. This is aimed at the Bahamas and other British colonies.

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Today -100: October 16, 1922: Of Fascists and geishas

Some members of the Italian cabinet think they should give in to the Fascists’ demand for a new election on new rules, but the majority of ministers don’t want to do that, so the cabinet will just resign and let the king decide who the next prime minister should be. Possibly frequent prime minister Giovanni Giolitti, who is already sounding out people for cabinet positions, including, possibly, some Fascists. An AP story says the government realizes it lacks sufficient authority and prestige to re-establish respect for the law, and the Fascists are “the real rulers of the country,” who, despite their “excesses,” are credited with preventing the Communists taking over.

The appellate court of Osaka, Japan rules that girls are not bound by contracts made by their parents or guardians without their consent. Geishas, we’re talking about geishas.

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Today -100: October 15, 1922: Of phones, drummers, new cities, and criteria

Automatic phones are inaugurated in NYC, so one can now dial, say, Pennsylvania 6-5000 without going through the operator, if one has a dial phone and lives in the Pennsylvania exchange, which is so far the only one with this service.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sounds like an ill-conceived children’s book. The drummer goes by “Sambo.”

The president of Brazil is authorized to begin construction of a city in the center of the country to serve as the new capital. They’ve been talking about this for decades, and it will actually take a few more decades for work to begin on Brasilia.

T.S. Eliot founds The Criterion, a literary magazine, which he will edit. The first issue includes his poem The Waste Land.

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Today -100: October 14, 1922: Of coalitions

Tory Party leader Austen Chamberlain opposes breaking up the Coalition government, saying the only choice is coalition or (gasp, horror) a Labour government. So he is happy keeping Lloyd George (Lib) in office as prime minister, but are the Tory MPs?

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Today -100: October 13, 1922: Every time I see the name Learned Hand it’s always startling

US District Judge Learned Hand issues a temporary injunction against the feds enforcing their rule against liquor on ships. The shipping companies complained, among other things, that Italian passengers and crew have to have wine. I mean, they just have to. (Update: I think it’s literally a requirement that crew on French and Italian ships are provided with wine).

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Today -100: October 12, 1922: Of sleeping firemen, immigration, and drug dealers

Headline of the Day -100:  

Which is NYC Mayor John Hylan’s excuse for denying them a pay raise. And he’ll remove the beds from fire stations. Also night school teachers pad their rolls, so no pay raise for them either. Or for cops.

Immigration officials like to “inspect” disabled foreigners before allowing them into the country, even for short visits, to ensure they don’t become a public charge. So they hold up Brunel Cohen, a former major and current Member of Parliament whose legs were shot off at Ypres, on his way to an American Legion convention. Other passengers of the Cunarder liner Berengaria who are inspected include actor Frederick Worlock, coming to act in a play, who lost a hand in Flanders, and Henry Biggs, a University College, London professor coming to give lectures, who has bad hearing.

Startling Ad of the Day -100:

You can get a tube of Listerine tooth paste at certain drug stores. The first one is free; after that it’ll cost ya 10¢, cause that’s how drug dealers roll.

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Today -100: October 11, 1922: Whither shall I lead 400,000 exiles?

The (Greek) governor of Eastern Thrace, Xenophon Decasos, asks “Whither shall I lead 400,000 exiles?”, now that Greece has agreed to give up the province. He figures Christians “will find life intolerable under this new and more terrible Turk”.

The Fat People’s League for Copeland is launched to support the Senate run of NYC Health Commissioner Royal Copeland. “Recruits are coming in by the ton”. Har fucking har.

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