Today -100: March 15, 1923: Of boxing, harem conventions, general strikes, and married sheiks

Éamon de Valera, still on the run, issues a decree banning the Siki-McTigue boxing match and all other sports, amusements, horse racing, hunting, etc. in national mourning for the killed and executed Republicans.

Trotsky is also dying, according to the former US ambassador to China, who should know because...?  (Update: Amb. Crane will deny having said this.)

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s the wife of Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, “dressed as a man.” She probably has a name but the NYT doesn’t know it (Latife, it’s Latife; also, she’s 24, not 19).

France and Belgium will soon have 100,000 troops occupying the Ruhr. More are being sent because they plan to seize the coal mines if German coal companies don’t pay the 40% taxes the occupiers say they are owed, which if I’m getting this right they’ve already paid to the German government, so this would be 80% tax total. The French are also putting hostages – burgomasters and the like – on the trains they’re operating, to prevent sabotage.

There was a general strike in Spain yesterday in response to the assassination in Barcelona of syndicalist labor leader Salvador Seguí, one of several recent political murders. The right-wing are talking about establishing a Fascismo regime.

Rudolph Valentino gets married. Sorry, ladies.

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Today -100: March 14, 1923: Of strokes, highly coloured jazz material, French terror, Irish executions, Babe blackmail, boll weevils and boars

NY Supreme Court Justice Ellis Staley rules that the Anti-Saloon League is a political committee which spends money supporting & opposing candidates in elections and must therefore report its expenditures. It’s unclear if it also has to release the names of its donors, which it has been ferociously hostile to doing.

Pravda announces that Lenin has had another stroke in a special edition of  Pravda on a day no other newspaper is appearing, the others taking the day off to celebrate the 6th anniversary of the end of Czardom. According to the announcement, Lenin resumed work in October but by December was so fatigued that his doctors forbade him to work, even to read newspapers; “They only allowed him to consider such general questions as reorganization of the State apparatus and peasant workers inspection or educational reforms.” But now he’s had a stroke (I blame the peasant workers inspections). The surprisingly frank bulletin even gives his temperature and pulse rate.

In other front-page-for-some-reason news, the Prince of Wales has been seen wearing fairly exotic clothes, including a sweater “of highly colored jazz material,” whatever that might be, and King Gustaf of Sweden loses at tennis.

France’s Gen. Laignelot threatens that if any more French soldiers (he doesn’t say anything about French railway workers) are killed, the burgomaster of Buer and other town officials being held as hostages will be shot in retaliation. The townsfolk are put under a 7:00 curfew with lights out at 10, and will be shot if they put their hands in their pockets. Germany sends France a protest against the “French terror in Buer.” Remember, the German government is claiming that French soldiers were responsible for the incident.

The Irish Free State executes another 7 Republicans. That makes 63 executions total. The British government has also been deporting Irish Republicans from Britain to Ireland for the first time, starting with a sweep of 110 men.

A Miss Delores Dixon, 19, sues Babe Ruth, who she says is the father of her child, for $50,000, which is the equivalent of some money. “It’s blackmail!” he replies, correctly.

The Prince of Wales falls off a horse, as was the custom.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Air-to-air combat, no doubt.

Headline of the Day -100: 

 Coals to Newcastle, really.

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Today -100: March 13, 1923: Of crowd control and fevers

When French soldiers attempt to arrest a couple of Germans they think responsible for the killing of the French soldier & railroadguy at Buer (the German government is now claiming it was actually done by French soldiers), a crowd forms and is fired upon. 7 dead. There are similar lethal events in Dortmund & Recklinghausen.

Doctors and, through relentless press coverage, the public, have been baffled by a Michigan girl who ran a temperature of 114 for weeks while seeming otherwise perfectly healthy. Of course it was a hoax. Hot water bottle.

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Today -100: March 12, 1923: Pitiless avenging is the worst kind of... oh, you know

For the first time, resistance to the French occupation of the Ruhr is expressed in the time-honored form of assassination, with a French lieutenant and a French stationmaster shot outside Buer. This is the first time any of the occupiers have been killed. PM Poincaré promises the murders will be “pitilessly avenged,” and France responds by taking hostages, including Buer’s burgomaster and police chief, and is threatening to fine the town 100 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money.

The French keep saying that Germany is just bound to offer to make a deal just... any... day... now.

No, NYT, the name of Hitler’s party is not the Nationalist Royalists. Anyway, something called the German Liberty Party is now allied to it. Never heard of it.

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Today -100: March 11, 1923: Of absurd ordinances, sleeping, and Harding in the mud where he belongs

The Post (UK) (possibly they mean the Morning Post?) says Lady Astor’s bill against under-age drinking in saloons would be a dead letter “like that absurd ordinance prohibiting boys under 16 from smoking cigarettes.”

With cases of sleeping sickness popping up in New York, causing several deaths, the health commissioner issues a warning against coughing, sneezing and spitting, which he reminds the public are against the law unless the mouth and nose are covered. He does admit that the mode of transmission of sleeping sickness is not understood (Hint: not through coughing, sneezing or spitting).

Mostly I’m relaying that story because one of the principles of this blog is to repeat as often as possible that sleeping sickness can be treated effectively and cheaply with Eflornithine, but Aventis stopped making the drug in the ‘90s because there’s just not enough profit in curing sick Africans of lethal diseases. Fortunately, the drug also turned out to be effective in treating unwanted facial hair in women, which is profitable, so they started producing it again.

Headline/Metaphor of the Day -100:  

Hey, I missed something: Henry Riggs Rathbone was elected to Congress last year, R. from Illinois. Not hugely interesting in himself, he was the son of Maj. Henry Rathbone, who was in the booth in Ford’s Theatre with Abraham that night with his fiancé/step-sister Clara and was stabbed by John Wilkes Booth. He eventually recovered and married Clara, but guilt from failing to save Lincoln gradually drove him insane. In 1883, now consul in Hanover, he attacked his children and Clara, murdering her. He spent the rest of his life in a German insane asylum, dying in 1911. Anyway, his kid’s a congresscritter now.

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Today -100: March 10, 1923: Of drinking, mortars, porterhouse steaks, and shafts

Lady Nancy Astor, MP, introduces the 1st bill every introduced into Parliament by a woman, to ban the sale of liquor in saloons to anyone under 18 for consumption on the premises (so the quaint practice of children being sent to fetch beer for their father can continue). The bill passes its first stage but will die unless the government provides it facilities to continue, which it won’t. During the debate, the Speaker steadfastly ignores Edwin Scrymgeour, the only MP from the Scottish Prohibition Party, who presumably had some thoughts on the subject, and Sir Frederick Banbury (age 72) reminisces about drinking beer during meals at Winchester College and says under-age drinking certainly didn’t ruin his looks. He also wonders how saloon-keepers will even be able to tell the age of women, he sure can’t, it’s something to do with the way they do their hair these days.

A mortar shell from the 1870 Franco-Prussian War detonates in the Hotel Raynaud in Paris, which had been using it to break coal. The handle broke and some idiot applied a hot iron to it to get the pieces out and...

Cigarettes are legal in Utah now.

The Soviet Union will abolish many cemeteries and turn them into vegetable gardens.

Obit of the Day -100:  Anna Remich, inventor of the porterhouse steak.

Headline of the Day That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t -100:  

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Today -100: March 9, 1923: We do not want a mongrel race in America

Lawrence Sperry flies a Sperry Messenger plane quite close to a Haviland at 65 mph to prove the possibility of mid-air refueling. The military thinks dirigibles might be good for that.

New York State Supreme Court Justice John Ford forms his “Clean Books League,” which seeks to make the law, he says, morally “horse high, pig tight and bull strong.” That means... something about fences on farms. Ford will appoint a committee of prominent men to read dubious books and give book reports. Everyone needs a hobby.

Sen. Samuel Shortridge (R-Cal.) says unrestricted immigration by Orientals would cause more trouble than slavery did. “We do not want a mongrel race in America. They do not assimilate and add no strength to our nation.”

Headline of the Day That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t -100:  

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Today -100: March 8, 1923: The armed forces may help some people to make up their minds to give their consent

Bavaria arrests conspirators aiming to place Prince Rupprecht on the traditional throne of the Mad Kings of Bavaria and then have the kingdom of Bavaria secede from Germany to form a nucleus to which more German territory would attach itself bit by bit. Oh, and they were planning on rule by a dictator... not sure who yet. One of the conspirators has already killed himself after being released from custody. Were they planning to do this under cover of a Czech invasion? Maybe! Were they in contact with the Nazi Party? Oh yeah! Were they being financed by French military intelligence (the Deuxième Bureau) in order to weaken Germany? What do you think? Was an orchestra director one of the ringleaders? Yes, maestro.

There’s an Italian custom/ceremony where Cabinet ministers hand their budgets to the finance minister. These days, Prime Minister Mussolini is also finance minister, so that ceremony takes place with lots of military personnel and Fascist militia present. The Duck says this is because consent to his regime is still developing and “it may happen, perhaps, that the armed forces may help some people to make up their minds to give their consent, and in any case if consent fails, the armed forces will remain.”

Vienna Polytechnic will exclude foreign Jewish students.

2 of the eye-witnesses against Sacco and Vanzetti at their 1921 trial retract their previous retractions of their trial testimony. Louis Pelsea says he was unemployed and drunk and signed the retraction for 70¢ and the promise of a “good time.” Lola Andrews says a defense attorney threatened to reveal stuff about her past life.

In 2 years in office, Harding has reduced the number of federal employees by 102,101, mostly in the army & navy.

South Carolina will give pensions to slaves who “loyally” served the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

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Today -100: March 7, 1923: Well satisfied

The Turkish National Assembly rejects the Lausanne Treaty.

Delaware ratifies the 19th Amendment, along with a bill subjecting women to the same taxation as men. Don’t know what it was before.

The archbishop of Messina says Pope Pius is “well satisfied” with Mussolini.

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Today -100: March 6, 1923: Get a shovel

Arthur Balfour’s government is not doing well in by-elections, including those required of MPs appointed to office. Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen was appointed Minister of Health but loses his by-election to J. Chuter Ede (Lab), who will be Attlee’s home secretary in the 1945-51 government. This comes a few days after George Stanley, under-secretary of the Home Office, lost his own by-election. Both therefore have to resign. Griffith-Boscawen, who says he was beaten by “rank treachery” (that’s the worst kind of treachery), presumably because an Independent Conservative candidate divided the right-wing vote, will be replaced as health minister by Neville Chamberlain.

France has suppressed many newspapers in the Ruhr and Rhine, and severely censored the rest. So Germany tries to reach the Ruhr through radio. French radio broadcast from the Eiffel Tower drowns it out. The French leave music alone, starting up their jamming when news or “Deutschland über alles” comes on.

The city of New York calls for bids to supply 100 gallons of rye whiskey for use in Bellevue and other hospitals for pneumonia and influenza patients and old people with bad hearts.

And the Hawaii territorial Legislature calls on Congress to allow light wines and beer, saying Prohibition has caused secret drunkenness and “hypocrisy, cant and dissimulation have become rampant.”

Human fly Harry Young falls off the outside of the 10th floor of the Martinique Hotel in NYC. It was a publicity stunt for Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! Before the ascent, the Martinique’s house dick, after helping Young inspect the building, asked if he’d like a room and a bath after the stunt. “If I do it, have the bath ready. If I don’t, get a shovel.” He was to get $100 for the stunt. He was 32 and had been married 2 months.

8 of the 12 Grand Jury members hearing about the Mer Rouge Ku Klux Klan murders are, you guessed it, kluxers themselves. This will go well.

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Today -100: March 5, 1923: Of Americanism and Do Nothing Congresses

A Portland, Oregon Ku Klux Klan dinner honoring Grand Dragon Fred Gifford is attended by Oregon Gov. Walter Pierce and Portland Mayor George Baker. They give speeches on the subject of “Americanism.”

The 67th Congress comes to an end, and the NYT article about that says it’s been called the “do nothing Congress.” I wonder if I’ve been failing to notice that phrase, more usually associated with Truman in ‘48.

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Today -100: March 4, 1923: Irretrievable failure is the worst kind of failure

The Senate votes down Harding’s proposal to join the World Court, 49-24. Exactly one Republican (Peter Norbeck of SD), supports it.

France troops occupy 5 more German towns, or at least their railway junctions and ports, in reprisal (their word) for the blocking & sabotage of Ruhr canals and railroads.

Sen. Joseph Robinson (D-Arkansas) says the outgoing 67th Congress has accomplished nothing except the Fordney-McCumber tariff act. Harding’s two most important legislative wishes, the World Court thing and the ship subsidy bill, failed miserably. “Thus failure, irretrievable failure, marks the record of the Administration throughout the last two years.” He attacks Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes for speaking to reporters but refusing to appear before the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee.

While Republicans were obstructing Harding’s wish list, Southern D’s filibuster everything else because they wanted the government to buy fertilizer for farmers to fight the dread boll-weevil.

The Dept of Labor rejects 300 appeals from Jews from Romania and Poland because those countries’ quota has been filled. They will be returned to the loving embrace of the anti-Semites that run Romania and Poland.

Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, who leaves the job and his political career behind at the end of the month, has a long article I couldn’t get to the end of about how difficult public office is. Wait’ll he finds out what prison is like!

The “Party of Freedom” is formed in Utah to fight the anti-smoking law.

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Today -100: March 3, 1923: Of fines, swallows, customs, and negris

France fines the Ruhr town of Kettwig 1 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money, after a telephone wire is cut, under the policy of fining communities if they can’t find the person(s) responsible. They plan to collect this fine house-to-house.

Name of the Day -100:  The former police chief of Topeka, held in contempt for refusing to testify in a lawsuit involving the Klan: Guy Swallow.

The Irish Free State wants a customs barrier with Northern Ireland, which is not best pleased with the idea.

Giacinto Menotti Serrati, the editor of the Socialist Avanti! who took over in 1914 after Mussolini was thrown out of the job, is arrested for plotting against the safety of the state by attending the Communist Internationale. (He and others of his staff will be released tomorrow).

The Norwegian government resigns after the Storthing rejects a commercial treaty with Portugal, possibly because it would allow Portuguese wine into dry Norway, though only for medicinal purposes.

The sheriff of Putnam County, Florida, fights off a lynch mob.

Charlie Chaplin and Pola Negri are engaged again. Sure, whatever.

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Today -100: March 2, 1923: That story will one day be told

Former British prime minister David Lloyd George thanks the intelligence service for “g[iving] us the information which ultimately brought America into the war. That story will one day be told.” One assumes he’s referring to the Zimmermann telegram.

Pola Negri breaks off her alleged engagement to Charlie Chaplin. He needs a rich wife, she says. Chaplin has claimed poverty.

The Ku Klux Klan’s former acting head E.Y. Clarke is indicted by a federal grand jury for paying the train-fare for a woman to come from Houston to New Orleans for some hanky panky. Yes that was illegal in 1923. Mann Act.

The Senate Immigration Committee is worried that Japanese workers will take over Hawaii.

Germany plans to confiscate any goods sent into Germany proper from the Ruhr if they pay the French the 10% tariff they’re demanding.

German inflation is now so out of hand that cash registers are useless because their numbers don’t go up that high.

The Wisconsin Senate votes to allow anyone to look at anyone else’s income tax returns.

A NYT editorial begins, “President Harding’s quiet acquiescence in the burking of his World Court proposal by the Republican Senate...” I’m delighted to see a word I’d thought had died out before 1923 still going strong, 95 years after the murderous careers of Burke & Hare were halted. In the 1980s (‘70s?) we used “disappeared” to mean the same thing, adopted from the practice of death squads in El Salvador and elsewhere of “disappearing” dissidents, but that usage died out despite its usefulness.

Secretary of Labor James Davis wants to “enroll” aliens living in the US, to “Americanize the alien before he alienizes America”, to make him a citizen or deport him if he is not worthy of citizenship. He wants them to have the “grave respect” that the Welsh have for the sanctity of the home.

The North Carolina State Senate rejects a bill to make secret societies (i.e., the Klan) register the names of of their members and a bill to ban masks, but does pass one against wearing a mask to commit a felony.

The lower house of the South Carolina Legislature votes to ban pool and billiards.

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Today -100: March 1, 1923: Of coal, mummies, and flushes

France will lift the ban on exports of coal from the Ruhr to Germany – if they are paid a 40% tax.

King Tutankhamun’s tomb has been covered with sand for the season, but the debate over whether to keep his mummy in place or put it in a museum rages on. The Associated Undertakers of Greater New York weighs in on the leave-mummies-alone side.

Headline of the Day -100, Without Comment:  

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Today -100: February 28, 1923: Of quotas, voodoo fire extinguishers, and women’s suffrage in Japan

Syracuse University’s student council considers asking the U. to limit the number of Jewish students. Chancellor Charles Wesley Flint tells them to fuck right off. The council was particularly incensed that Jewish students showed insufficient interest in sports. 10% of Syracuse students are Jewish. (The senior council will deny having ever suggested any such thing, it was just a discussion, in a secret session, and anyone it shouldn’t have been leaked, how’d you even hear about it? So that’s okay then.)

Headline of the Day -100:  

A general punch-up in the Japanese Diet postpones a vote on women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: February 27, 1923: Of obscenity and statues

The NYT says that NY State Supreme Court Justice John Ford’s crusade for the censorship of books “looks merely ridiculous, but it isn’t.” This crusade is strongly backed by the clergy, and the proposal is that any naughty passage in a publication makes the whole thing obscene, legally speaking.

Atatürk says statues are okay now. When Mohammed banned them, he says, there was idolatry around, which is no longer a problem. He says modern nations need art.

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Today -100: February 26, 1923: Of ruhrs

Headline of the Day -100:  

France occupies more of the Ruhr, and yes they’re using non-white troops, although supposedly it was an accident that 200 Martiniquais were sent. Gen. Degoutte had them removed when he found out about it.

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Today -100: February 25, 1923: Of world courts, unsubsidized ships, and smoking

Pres. Harding asks the Senate to allow the US to join the World Court. The real question is why he left it so late, with only a few days left in the 67th Congress and senators (especially R’s) are suspicious of the Court and need to be won over.

Congress has killed the ship subsidy bill that Harding really really wanted.

Protest meeting in Salt Lake City against the anti-public-smoking law, which has recently been enforced against the sort of people who don’t think laws apply to them.

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Today -100: February 24, 1923: Of sati and Ruhr outrages

A woman in India commits suttee/sati at her husband’s funeral. She was 25-ish. Didn’t she know the British outlawed this kind of thing? Anyway, 6 villagers (all male) were arrested and tried. 3 were acquitted, 3 sentenced to 4 years.

The German embassy in the US claims the French are using non-white troops in the Ruhr and billeting them in private homes. France denies this.

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