Today -100: January 31, 1914: My alphabet has been the sight and trigger of a rifle

The British Labour Party’s annual conference again supports women’s suffrage, only 2 of the 600 delegates voting no.

Headline of the Day -100: “Villa To Adopt Civilized Warfare.” He will stop executing Federal prisoners unless they had been captured once before, released on a promise not to fight again, and broken that promise. Villa denies wanting to be president: “I never went to school a day in my life, and I am not educated enough for the post. My alphabet has been the sight and trigger of a rifle; my books have been the movements of the enemy.”

More military-civilian conflict in Germany’s most recently acquired provinces: at a concert for the Kaiser’s birthday in Metz, Lorraine, a lieutenant orders two locals to stop speaking French. They leave the concert hall but he follows them to a restaurant, where he is outraged to find that they (and two others) are persisting in not speaking German to each other. He calls in a major, who is outraged that they do not remove their caps in the presence of a royal Prussian major and knocks the cap off one of them, as is the custom with royal Prussian majors. The four Lorrainers are arrested and turned over to the police, who release them.

At the United Mine Workers convention, the Illinois secretary-treasurer accuses Samuel Gompers of having gotten “gloriously drunk” at the Seattle convention and having a “snoot-full” at the Atlanta convention. Miners are pissed that the AFL hasn’t given sufficient financial support to the striking Michigan copper miners.

The steamship Monroe goes down after being hit in the fog by the Nantucket in the Atlantic Ocean, 50 miles off Virginia. 41 die. Much is made of the heroism of the wireless operator, who stayed at his post signaling for help after giving his life preserver to a “hysterical woman.” His mother had had a premonition and begged him not to go to sea.

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Today -100: January 30, 1914: Of leaks, Confucianism, archbishops, sick animals, large families, and awed bears

After details of American negotiations with Japan over the racist alien land law in California leak, the Wilson administration suggests that newspapers should in future refrain from discussing the US’s foreign relations, especially since it might embarrass the US when foreign governments read in newspapers stories about America’s policies that contradict what the US government has told them. And this means you, Edward Snowden!

The Wilsonites say that they do not consider as unfriendly the actions of Japanese companies in selling arms to the Huerta regime in Mexico.

Chinese President and Aspiring Dictator Yuan reestablishes Confucianism. Yuan will set an example for his religion-deficient people by starting to worship at the Temples of Heaven & Confucius, just like the emperors did, but without wearing a crown, because that would be too obvious.

British suffragettes lay siege to Lambeth Palace, demanding to see the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject of forcible feeding. Eventually he reluctantly agrees to see one of them, but will only say that he would definitely have a think about the subject of forcible feeding (which has been going on in British prisons since 1909, so you’d think he’d have an opinion by now).

Honestly, I liked the old Mad King of Bavaria better: King Ludwig tells aristocratic women that instead of patronizing charities for sick animals, they should take care of sick poor people: “Sick animals should be killed, but sick people cured.”

The League of Large Families in France proposes Mme. Amet, mother of 22 living children, for the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

Headline of the Day -100: “Girl Teachers Awe a Bear.”

Or is this the Headline of the Day -100?: “Kisses Baby and Is Killed.” (LA Times). A Baptist minister in Georgia leans over to kiss his child good-bye, the gun he always carries so his children don’t play with it falls out of his pocket and goes off.

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Today -100: January 29, 1914: Of wireless, marches on Washington, red lights, and once again Oklahoma is not OK

Wireless communication is established between Germany and the United States, without any relaying. The first message is from Kaiser Bill to Woodrow Wilson, and just says whassup.

Gen. Coxey announces a new “Coxey’s Army” march of the unemployed on Washington, on the 20th anniversary of the last one. He wants there to be government-owned banks in every town with 1,000 people.

Ah, European aristocratic mating habits: Prince Blücher von Wahlstatt is now his son’s brother-in-law; his son is now uncle of his own half-siblings and is indeed his own uncle. That is, the prince and his son, Count Lothar, both married sisters (albeit 18 years apart), Princess Louise Radziwill and Princess Wanda Radziwill. The son married the older sister, because of course he did. If Lothar and Louise have children, he will be their 1) father, 2) cousin, and 3) great-uncle.

Pres. Wilson won’t sign a bill abolishing the red light district of the District of Columbia until there is non-prostitute work available for any prostitutes who want it. Or they could just all move to Alexandria.

Rear Admiral Charles Vreeland tells the House Naval Committee in secret session that in event of war Japan could easily seize the Philippines, but not Hawaii, Alaska or the Panama Canal. “Members of the committee got the impression from Admiral Vreeland’s testimony that preparation for any trouble with Japan must be based upon the idea that Japan would strike without notice if she went to war with the United States.”

As a result of the military-civilian contretemps in Zabern, Alsace, the entire Alsace-Lorraine government resigns. Berlin will probably appoint a more hard-line governor-general.

The federal circuit court upholds Oklahoma’s Jim Crow law against a negro doctor who was told, when the train he was on crossed into the state, to leave the “white” car. He refused, there was a lively debate and he was arrested.

In other segregation news, it has been noticed that a bill working its way through Congress for agricultural education allows any state with more than one agricultural college to decide how to allocate the funds. In other words, Southern states will send all the money to white colleges.

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Today -100: January 28, 1914: Of canal governments, rubber warships, exiles, coups, lions, and lynchings

Woodrow Wilson creates, by executive order, a government for the Panama Canal Zone, and names the Canal’s chief engineer, Col. George Goethals, governor. A bit of a conflict with New York City, which has offered him the post of police commissioner.

The British Navy is experimenting with rubber-plated warships. That just sounds dirty.

South Africa will exile 10 of the leaders of the general strike. To England. Without a trial. On a ship with no wireless that will take months to arrive.

Haitian President Michael Oreste resigns in the face of a successful revolution, and seeks asylum on a German warship. Meanwhile, American and German troops land, in order to protect their nationals and their property.

I wonder who the first person was to die making a film? Possibly Fritz Schindler, who was trying to film lions in Kenya, although he probably meant to film the exteriors of lions rather than their interiors.

A negro accused of the murder of a Mrs. Lynch in Wendell, North Carolina, is, well, the hint’s in that name, isn’t it?

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Today -100: January 27, 1914: Of watchful waiting, anarchist MPs, and gypsy wars

Woodrow Wilson tells members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he will end the arms embargo against the Mexican rebels, but that his policy is still the alliterative “watchful waiting” thing.

Amilcare Cipriani is elected to the Italian Parliament for Milan. A famous anarchist, he fought for Garibaldi, and for the attempted Greek revolution in the 1860s, and for the Paris Commune, and has spent much of his life in Italian prisons or the French penal colony New Caledonia. Which also means he’s been stripped of his civil rights in Italy, so he can’t take his seat even if he were willing to swear allegiance to the king.

Headline of the Day -100 (Washington Post): “France Wars on the Gypsies.” France plans to expel foreign-born gypsies and require all gypsies to carry i.d. cards with a picture and fingerprints. This brings France into line with most other gypsy-hating European countries. Germany is the most unpleasant to Roma.

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Today -100: January 26, 1914: Of held Mexicans, royal yachts, and ex-towns

Headline of the Day -100: “NATION HAS RIGHT TO HOLD MEXICANS.” (We will hug him and squeeze him and call him Jorge). District court rules that the US Secretary of War can keep refugees from the Mexican Army interned.

Prince Wilhelm of Wied plans to arrive in Albania, the country whose king he’s going to be, on a new yacht, the Mohican. That’s assuming his rival Essad Pasha allows him to land at all.

Remember how the governor of Oregon sent his secretary to put the town of Copperfield under martial law because its saloons violated closing hours laws and its mayor & some city council members owned saloons? Now he’s ordered the town disincorporated unless its officials all resign.

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Today -100: January 25, 1914: Of typograms (or something), kidnapping, and naval demonstrations

Technology Headline of the Day -100: “Typewriter May Soon Be Transmitter of Telegrams.” Some New Zealand guy has invented a doohickey. But really, sending messages around the world from your keyboard? That’s just crazy talk.

A special grand jury in Michigan refuses to return a true bill against the men who assaulted two miners’ union officials, kidnapped them, and forcibly deported them last month. The prosecutor had helpfully explained to the jury that it wasn’t kidnapping if there was no intent to confine them or to hold them in service, as opposed to forcing them over state lines against their wills.

The Senate passes a bill for a government railroad in Alaska.

The European Great Powers will each send a ship to Albanian waters in a “naval demonstration,” to suggest politely to Essad Pasha that he not try to make himself king of Albania.

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The strong interest of the Texas Legislature

The lawyer for the Texas hospital keeping the brain-dead pregnant woman on life support (and not enough has been made of the fact that this is a public hospital, owned by Tarrant County) argued in court, “Given the strong interest of the Texas Legislature in protecting the life of unborn children, it is unlikely the Legislature contemplated only the welfare of the mother”.

Wait, let me correct that for you: “it is unlikely the Legislature contemplated only the welfare of the mother”.

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Today -100: January 24, 1914: Of fake unions, defective Asiatics, and big sticks

German Chancellor Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg accuses socialist MPs who are asking questions in the Reichstag about the soldiers acquitted for their actions in Zabern of undermining the throne.

The convention of the United Mine Workers expels Local 979 of Pocahontas, West Virginia, on the grounds that it’s a front organization created by a detective agency to get an agent into the UMW convention.

Labor Secretary William Wilson proposes to Congress a ban on Hindu immigrants (who are supposedly sneaking into the US via the Philippines). He also suggests physical tests for prospective Asiatic laborer immigrants to exclude defectives; he’s presumably okay with white-skinned defectives.

The Bonapartist pretender to the French throne, Victor Napoleon (known as Napoleon V to a handful of cranks), fathers a male heir to his non-existent throne.

You know that “big stick” Theodore Roosevelt carried? It just got stolen.

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Today -100: January 23, 1914: Of profit-sharing, voting rights, and war movies

Ford is quizzing its employees about how they spend their money before allowing them into the profit-sharing program. If they say they send it back to the Old Country, they’re not allowed to participate.

South Carolina’s General Assembly votes in favor of repealing the 15th Amendment.

The first fruits of Pancho Villa’s film deal are shown in New York City, and they sound rather disappointing. Villa is shown smiling as he leads his troops into battle at Ojinaga, then he is shown smiling as he leads his troops out of the battle at Ojinaga, but there’s no actual battle footage because the battle was fought at night. A likely story.

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Counseling or screaming

During last week’s Supreme Court hearings on the Massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone case, Stephen Breyer commented that the particular context of an abortion clinic might justify such a law: “Everyone is in a fragile state of mind.” He said, “It’s just tough to say whether they’re counseling somebody or screaming at somebody.” Breyer has clearly spent way too much time with Antonin Scalia.

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Today -100: January 22, 1914: Only those persons who have lost all moral sense can endure it. It is the shame of our days.

Headline of the Day -100: “SUFFRAGE HIT BY KINDNESS.; Senate Ready to Pass the Bill, but Ashhurst Talks Too Long.” Sen. Henry Ashurst (D-Arizona) (misspelled in that headline) gave a three-hour pro-suffrage speech, using up the time needed for a pro-suffrage vote, so the Senate moved on to the Alaska Railroad bill.

Alliterative Headline of the Day -100: “Menace By Militants.”

Straw Headline of the Day -100: “Straw Hat Appears in Mobile.” Sign of spring, or something, 1914-style.

Mesmeric Headline of the Day -100: “Raid Broke Up ‘Trance.’” Arresting 20 white people, evidently a Spiritualist meeting, at the home of a negro woman the Paterson, NJ who police describe as a “common clairvoyant.” She will be fined $100 and each of the attendees $3. For what crime, I don’t know.

The NYT letter columns for the past couple of weeks has been deeply concerned with palindromes.

Cardinal Cavallari, the patriarch of Venice, says the tango is “everything that can be imagined. It is revolting and disgusting. Only those persons who have lost all moral sense can endure it. It is the shame of our days. Whoever persists in it commits a sin.” He orders that absolution be denied to anyone who confesses to having tangoed without promising to abstain in the future.

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Gender diversity

The state of Utah’s latest arguments to the Supreme Court in favor of marriage inequality is that the state is supporting diversity, just like affirmative action or something:

Society has long recognized that diversity in education brings a host of benefits to students. If that is true in education, why not in parenting? At a minimum, the State and its people could rationally conclude that gender diversity — i.e., complementarity — in parenting is likely to be beneficial to children. And the state and its people could therefore rationally decide to encourage such diversity by limiting the coveted status of ‘marriage’ to man-woman unions.

The state doesn’t explain what gender diversity in parenting actually means, and should be made to explain its “Men do parenting like this, but women do parenting like this” argument in excruciating detail. As I’ve said before, homophobia is basically a subset of sexism.

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Today -100: January 21, 1914: The antagonism between business and government is over

Pres. Wilson appears before both houses of Congress to lay out the principles behind five anti-trust bills he will send them. These would 1) set up an Interstate Trade Commission (for disseminating information, not enforcement, except for fining corporations that do not provide information to it); 2) ban interlocking directorates; 3) better define the existing Sherman Anti-Trust Act; 4) allow individuals, not just the attorney general, to initiate anti-trust suits; 5) something or other about railroad securities. “The antagonism between business and government is over,” Wilson says. In other words, he’s denying that these measures are as radical as business types will no doubt make them out to be.

Headline of the Day -100: “Union Breaks Up Funeral.” During the funeral service for a Mrs. Marion Auzone of Trenton, the hearse drivers were informed that the musicians playing the dirge were non-union, so they quit and drove off. The pallbearers had to carry the coffin to the cemetery, stopping for occasional breaks, and if you’re not thinking of that Monty Python episode by now I don’t even want to know you.

The Wisconsin eugenic-marriage law is declared unconstitutional, both for setting doctors’ fees for issuing health certificates too low ($3) and for impairing the right of matrimony. However, the circuit judge did not agree that the law was unfair in only demanding medical examination of men.

The Ulster Women’s Unionist Council is organizing Ulsterwomen to participate in the upcoming civil war: driving ambulances, nursing, carrying messages, etc.

A French dancing teacher sues the archbishop of Paris for banning the tango. Loss of business.

Has the NYT been covering the Haitian revolution and I’ve just missed the stories? Anyway, the rebels have defeated government forces in a battle and the minister of war is running for his life.

The NYPD has some sort of objection to the play “The House of Bondage.” A play by one Joseph Byron Totten, something about a brothel, described by the New York Telegram as “so scarlet it screams.” Evidently it’s already been so expurgated in response to police pressure as to be silly, and it lasted 8 performances.

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Today -100: January 20, 1914: The King has got to see us, or we shall know the reason why

Headline of the Day -100: “Women Now Menace King.” The Women’s Social and Political Union’s Norah Dacre-Fox on the WSPU’s plan to petition the king in person: “The King has got to see us, or we shall know the reason why.”

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Today -100: January 19, 1914: Of assassins, sneezes, and funny money

In Paris a few days ago there was an assassination attempt on Mehmed Cherif Pasha, a former Turkish ambassador to Sweden who is now an anti-Young-Turk exile. The assassin did succeed in killing his valet before being shot dead by Cherif’s son-in-law. Anyway, since then a French lawyer, Georges Desbons, who claims to have information about another planned assassination attempt, was refused entry at Cherif’s house (possibly because the last stranger to turn up had a gun and a dagger and a Koran), so now he’s demanding an apology or a duel with Cherif, because of course he is.

A jury in Bunzlau, Germany, refuses a police demand that a man be convicted of disturbing the public police for sneezing too loudly.

Bulgaria sells Turkey 200,000 rifles it captured from Turkish troops during the Balkan war.

Venezuela says that it will not be able to hold congressional and state elections next month because of the state of rebellion and because Gen. Gomez really doesn’t want to give up power. They may not have said the last part out loud.

Mexican rebels are either issuing their own currency now or counterfeiting it, it’s not really clear. Anyway, 10 million pesos in paper money of this currency were seized in Chicago, but since the US doesn’t recognize any Mexican government, the money can’t be considered counterfeit under US law and will be given back.

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Today -100: January 18, 1914: Of overrated navies, internationales, and gangsters’ balls

Headline of the Day -100: “Navy Is Overrated, Says F.D. Roosevelt.” Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt says the navy doesn’t have nearly enough dreadnoughts to protect the East Coast from invasion in event of some sort of war. He doesn’t say who he thinks would land soldiers on the East Coast. (The thing about the Navy being “overrated” is that people overestimate the number of ships it has; FDR says only 16 of them are good enough to be sent against an enemy fleet).

Two brothers, Pierre and Adolphe de Triter, went to court in France in a dispute over which of them composed the music of the song The Internationale in 1888. The court rules in Adolphe’s favor, but Wikipedia says that he was put up to falsely claiming ownership by Lille’s mayor and the French Socialist Party (Pierre had moved ideologically to their left). Adolphe admitted the fraud in his suicide note in 1916 and the copyright was re-awarded to Pierre in 1922. It is still in effect.

The House Rules Committee decides against setting up a special committee of the House on women’s suffrage.

New Headline of the Day -100: “Police Didn't Know of Gangsters' Ball.” An NYPD police captain is being investigated for neglect of duty for not stopping or at least keeping a watch on a gangsters’ ball which ended, as gangsters’ balls do, with a gun battle that killed a passer-by, who happened to be a City Court clerk. Cops from Capt. Sweeney’s precinct testifying in his defense say that no one knew about the ball, despite the placards which advertised who would be attending.

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Today -100: January 17, 1914: Of subs, Hindus, and fleas

The British submarine A7 sinks to the bottom of Whitesand Bay, killing 11 men.

A meeting of Colorado miners threatens to free Mother Jones, currently being held by the military under martial law, by force of arms.

Canada will require Hindus entering the country to prove they have $200.

Alfred de Rothschild (of the London Rothschilds) buys a flea for $5,000. A sea otter flea. He collects fleas. Because of course he does.

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Today -100: January 16, 1914: Of insurance, spoils, general strikes, and the tango

Lloyd’s of London calculates an insurance policy for Shackleton’s polar expedition based on a risk of failure of only 10%.

Pres. Wilson is in a dispute with Congressional Democrats over spoils in the postal system. Wilson says he will veto the Post Office appropriations bill if it contains an amendment removing 2,400 positions from the civil service and returning them to the spoils system.

Mexico mostly stops paying postal orders. Well, the PO will make full payment, but in stamps. The problem is that military units have been looting post offices.

South Africa has crushed the general strike, arresting many union leaders, some of whom surrendered after a field gun was trained on the Trades Hall in Johannesburg. The government mobilized Boer burghers into militias, telling the strikers in so many words, Hey the army might not shoot you, but these guys are crazy!

The pope comes out against the tango. So don’t dance the tango, dude. He also objects to the “new paganism,” although I doubt he was particularly fond of the old paganism.

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Today -100: January 15, 1914: Of militias, fast cars, and honored women

Congress and the secretary of war are working on a bill to make the state militias available for use in foreign countries, and by foreign countries they of course mean Mexico.

Ford Motors in Detroit may recently have started the first moving assembly line, but Ford in Manchester, England, builds a car in 11 minutes and started driving it around in 19 (the 8 minutes were wasted because someone forgot to “pack the induction pipe,” whatever that means).

In a change of policy by Pancho Villa, the capture of Ojinaga is not followed by executions.

Sarah Bernhardt is named to the Legion of Honor.

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