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Today -100: September 30, 1915: Of strikes, wirelesses, conductors, military training, and rainbows

A strike begins at the Pratt & Whitney factories in Hartford for an 8-hour day and overtime pay. The general manager refused to negotiate with workers’ leaders he called transient agitators and new employees unrepresentative of the employees as a whole. At some point no doubt he’ll also claim, as was the custom, that they’re being paid by the Germans, but the truth is that with all the war orders this is a great time for the workers to press demands.

A NYT account of the Battle of Loos, 4 days in, fails to mention, as they all have, the British use of chlorine gas.

A wireless phone call is successfully placed from Arlington, Virginia to Mare Island, California, 2,500 miles away. This should enable the Navy to communicate with ships at sea. (In fact, the message reached all the way to an AT&T mast at Pearl Harbor.)

Headline of the Day -100, Because Inter-Racial Marriage Is Always News:

Arturo Toscanini, the principle conductor of the Metropolitan Opera House, who left for Italy some months ago (originally booked on the Lusitania), won’t be coming back. He actually volunteered for the Italian army after Italy entered the war, despite his age (48) and terrible eyesight. He will later flirt with fascism before sharply breaking with Mussolini, but he won’t return to the US until 1939.

Massachusetts Governor David Walsh wants to introduce mandatory military training for boys at age 14 and to excuse men who serve 3 years in the state militia from paying poll taxes.

D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow is published. It will be prosecuted for obscenity and all the copies seized and burned. It won’t reappear in Britain for 11 years (except for illicit copies of the American edition, published next month).

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Today -100: September 29, 1915: Of victim-blaming, aggression, kindred nationality, primaries, loafing agitators, and mittens

Headline of the Day -100:

Wow. In a couple of days Bernstorff, the German ambassador to the United States has switched from calling accounts of the genocide “pure inventions” to “greatly exaggerated” to military necessity and they were asking for it.

Headline of the Day -100:

Their own fault, presumably.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Spoiler Alert: Bulgaria will totally attempt aggression.

Grey claims in his friendly warning to Bulgaria that Germany is trying to stir up disunion and war in the Balkans by promising territorial gains, but these will only come at the cost of complete subordination to Germany. On the other hand, Britain’s policy is “to insure each [of the Balkan states] not only independence but a brilliant future, based as a general principle on territorial and political union and kindred nationality.”

With Austrian Amb. Dumba’s recall, the US considers the whole sorry affair “closed,” and won’t take any action against German military attaché (and future chancellor) Franz von Papen, although just to be sure von Papen plans to go to Mexico to lay low for a while.

A US cavalry private who went missing last week during a cross-border scuffle is reportedly seen on the Mexican side - well, his head anyway.

New York primaries continue the recent sorry trend of Tammany politicians winning back their party from the reformers. There are “only” 17 election-related arrests in NYC (15 fraudulent voting, most of those just people who’d supposedly lived at their addresses less than a year, and 2 for electioneering).

L.T. Russell, a New Jersey Democrat, wrote an editorial about a threatened Singer sewing-machine factory strike, suggesting that “every loafing agitator” be taken to Staten Island Sound, have a rock tied around their neck and be thrown off the dock. Although he didn’t name any loafing agitators in particular, John Keyes of Elizabeth NJ swears out a warrant for Russell for inciting to murder. In fact, there was no strike: Singer took the less murderous step of firing workers who had the effrontery to ask for higher wages.

I know, the “rock tied around the neck” thing seems so much more Jersey, doesn’t it?

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 28, 1915: Of Mexican Wobblies, pure inventions, personae non gratae, and political offenses

Carranza is blaming the recent cross-border shootings on Mexican Wobblies wearing imitation Carranzista army uniforms. A likely story. Something about a plot to provoke US intervention, which will lead, somehow, to land redistribution.

German Ambassador to the US Count von Bernstorff says the reports lately filling the newspapers about the Armenian Genocide are “pure inventions.”

Austria, after trying to get the US to agree to Amb. Konstantin Dumba going on a leave of absence until that whole thing about trying to disrupt work at US munitions factories dies down, will recall him as the US demanded.

A person or persons unknown tries to burn down Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park mansion.

Miroslav Sichynsky, a Ukrainian/Ruthenian who assassinated the Austrian governor of Galicia, Count Potocki, in 1908 and escaped prison in 1911, surrenders to the US commissioner of immigration. He’s been living in the US since November and wants US citizenship. The bureau will rule in December that the assassination was a political rather than a criminal offense and so will not deport him. He died in Michigan in 1979.

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Today -100: September 27, 1915: Cloth caps off

Keir Hardie, the first proper Labour (and socialist) member of Parliament (from 1892, when some of his campaign funds came, curiously, from Andrew Carnegie), former leader of the Labour Party and the Independent Labour Party, anti-imperialist, supporter of women’s suffrage, secret lover of Sylvia Pankhurst, and cloth-cap owner extraordinaire, dies at just 59, worn out from fighting the war.

Dr. H. Barringer Cox has invented a portable wireless system, which he will lend to “a certain foreign power” for war use. Unlike some of the inventors who have been surfacing lately, Cox has and will have a pretty good track record on dry cells and wireless systems.

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Today -100: September 26, 1915: Of long-distance treason, idiotic Yankees, dogs, and hobo poets

The detailed NYT story on the commencement of the Battle of Loos fails to mention the British use of poison gas.

The Imperial Court of Galicia (Austrian Poland) asks a Youngstown, Ohio court to question an Austrian subject, Joseph Ciepielowski, on their behalf about treasonous remarks he supposedly made, in Youngstown, about Austria. The judge actually summons Ciepielowski, who refuses to answer.

Military attaché of the German embassy Capt. Franz von Papen says the phrase in his intercepted letter, “idiotic Yankees,” was taken out of context; he only meant the publishers of a certain New York newspaper, you know, those idiotic Yankees. Also, he complains that it’s “deuced bad form” and “ungentlemanly” to publish a man’s letter to his wife.

The US federal government says that some of the recent cross-border firefights were provoked by Texas deputy sheriffs and civilians shooting into Mexico, and asks the governor of Texas to put a stop to it.

The team of dogs that won the whatever-Alaska-had-before-the-Iditerod race is sold to the French army for use in the mountains.

IWW members are flocking to Salt Lake City to protest the forthcoming execution of “hobo poet” Joseph Hillstrom, aka Joe Hill (coiner of the phrase “pie in the sky”) for supposedly shooting a grocer and his son as part of a robbery or something. He showed up at a hospital with a bullet wound after that event, but there was never any proof that the two shootings were related. Still, he was a Wobbly, so it’s off to the firing squad for him.

Headline of the Day -100:

Passaic election officials are “puzzled” about the rights of a second-generation US-born citizen.

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Today -100: September 25, 1915: Of looses, mobilizations, stolen wheat, and yeah I’m sticking with “lynchings”

The Battle of Loos begins with the British using poison gas (chlorine) for the first time. They had no delivery system except the wind, so some of the gas inevitably blew back on the British lines. One officer who pointed out that the wind was blowing the wrong way was ordered to release the gas anyway, which tells you everything you need to know about the military. Once the Germans saw what was happening, they started shooting at the gas tanks, with hilarious results. Still, the British did gas 600 or so Germans to death. And lost the battle.

Speaking of inhumane weapons, most of the British troops at Loos were Scottish, so they were led into battle by pipers. Don’t know how you play bagpipes wearing a gas mask.

Because Bulgaria mobilized its military, Greece is mobilizing its military. Isn’t that how this stupid war started to begin with?

A large band of Mexicans, some wearing the uniform of Carranza’s army, invade Progreso, Texas, loot the post office and burn it. Several are killed as well as one US Army private.

J.F. Lucey, a former US Army captain involved with Belgian relief, tells an interesting tale of how last November when Liège was starving, he requisitioned (i.e., stole) 5,000 tons of German wheat being held in Holland.

A 14-year-old negro is lynched in Jackson, Georgia for allegedly assaulting a white girl. Since he’s only 75 pounds, there is some discussion of whether weights need to be tied to his feet to hang him properly.

Did I say lynched? Actually he was legally executed, in public in front of a crowd of 50 or so . Sometimes it’s hard to tell the fucking difference.

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Today -100: September 24, 1915: Meet the Diminutive Submersible of Doom

Sexy, Sexy Headline of the Day -100: 

Reports received by the US government, including ones from its consular officials which are not being made public, indicate that Turkey has killed 500,000 Armenians.

Prof. Herschel Parker, physicist and mountain-climber, has invented a miniature two-man submarine (aka “diminutive submersible” or “motor torpedo”) and intends to give it to the US. He’s also invented a powerful underwater searchlight to spot enemy subs. Parker says 1,000 mini-subs can be manufactured for the cost of one dreadnought. I don’t think anything came of any of this. He claims to have the endorsement of Henry Ford, who will deny this rather vehemently next week.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 23, 1915: Of mobilizations and rescues

Bulgaria mobilizes its military, claiming it’s purely defensive and precautionary. It is not.

French naval ships which were on blockade duty off Ottoman Syria rescued 5,000 Armenian refugees (in July, but we’re just now hearing about it). They’re now in a camp in Egypt. Nice to know somebody is doing something about the Armenian Genocide.

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Today -100: September 22, 1915: I always say to these idiotic Yankees that they had better hold their tongues

Anthony Comstock, crusader against smut and general all-round asshole, dies at 71. Some of the “smut” he fought against included the works of Boccaccio, Zola and George Bernard Shaw as well as medical textbooks, some of which he banned from the US mails from his position as postal inspector, and of course anything relating to birth control. Most recently he hounded Margaret Sanger out of the country and put her husband in jail.

Germany is still claiming that the Hesperian was sunk by a mine rather than a German torpedo. Britain is sending the US government what it says is a fragment of the torpedo.

More of Austrian Ambassador Dumba’s letters, seized by the British from his courier, are made public. One to the Austrian foreign minister says it is pointless to continue complaining about US munitions sales to the Allies because of the “self-willed temperament” of Pres. Wilson. Dumba talks of the slave-like conditions in the steel factories and suggests commissioning an exposé novel along the lines of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. He also has plans to send agents into the Bethlehem steel factories to “work in secret among their fellow workers,” and to hire soap-box orators and subsidize foreign-language newspapers.

Also leaked to the press: Germany military attaché Capt. Franz von Papen’s letter to his wife: “I always say to these idiotic Yankees that they had better hold their tongues.” The future chancellor of Germany, ladies and gentlemen!

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Today -100: September 21, 1915: Shocked to hear that gambling etc

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Germany is claiming that France is forcibly enlisting men from Alsace-Lorraine into its army, and giving them forged French citizenship papers so they won’t be charged with treason if captured by the Germans. Alsace-Lorrainers who really don’t want to fight for France are sent to Africa, where it’s harder to defect, to fight in colonial units.

William Jennings Bryan objects to the big loan being arranged by US banks for the Allies, saying it is “getting the people of this country to gamble on the war” and creating a vested interest in one side winning.

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Today -100: September 20, 1915: Because not killing people is soooooo tiring

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: Supposedly a German u-boat sneakily disguised as a British submarine is sunk by another u-boat (doubtful).

More Fog of War: The Austrians have supposedly melted down the Cesare Zocchi monument to Dante in Trento to make cannons (no, of course they haven’t).

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 19, 1915: You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry or playing ukeleles

Austrian Amb. Konstantin Dumba complains to Secretary of State Robert Lansing that his communications with his home government have been so censored by the US (he has to rely on US-controlled wireless stations, while his Allied counterparts can use the trans-Atlantic cables from Canada) that Vienna is likely to recall him without even knowing that he denies having violated any US laws with his plans to disrupt US munitions production. He continues to assert that his only aim was to protect his countrymen from inadvertently violating Austro-Hungarian law, which would be a good argument if his captured unencyphered letter hadn’t talked about disrupting munitions manufacturing.

Headline Combining the Words “Angry” and “Ukeleles” of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 18, 1915: Of explorers and protectorates

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian arctic explorer, who has been out of contact for nearly 18 months, turns up at Herschel Island for supplies. He plans to continue mapping out the territories he’s discovered, at least until he runs out of expedition members (13 dead so far). Stefansson provides an account, if you’re interested. I notice the map in one of the NYT stories still includes the fictitious “Crocker Land.”

The US recognizes Haiti’s government – after it signs the treaty to no longer be a real government in control of its own finances and police.

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Today -100: September 17, 1915: Of dumas and toadvines

Tsar Nicholas prorogues the Duma, which has been pushing for reforms, for two months. The leftists in the Duma are not pleased, a deputy named... Kerensky shouting “Down with all traitors!”

Name of the Day -100: Ernest A. Toadvine, who wins the Democratic primary for clerk of the Circuit Court in Wicomico County, Maryland, despite having died the day before.

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Today -100: September 16, 1915: Of medicals, hangings, prisoners, and insulting Germans

One of the people mentioned in Austrian Amb. Dumba’s intercepted letter as a participant in his schemes to disrupt munitions production in the US was Consul-General Alexander Nuber von Pereked. Evidently he’s also been going around Ohio making Austrian and Hungarian nationals take medical exams for military recruitment and charging them $3. Which sounds so much like a scam that a Budapest newspaper denounced it as such, before having to reverse themselves the next day.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Turkey’s less-than-diplomatic response to efforts by US Amb. Henry Morgenthau’s attempts to get them to dial down the genocide.

Germany objects, officially, to the French and British use of non-white troops. African and Indian troops, they say, take ears as souvenirs and kill wounded soldiers. They’re just making this nice, decent war all uncivilized.

The Tsar of Russia orders an amnesty for all political prisoners, maybe 100,000 of them.

The German occupation authority in Belgium makes it illegal to boycott, blacklist or insult Germans or pro-German Belgians, a crime punishable by 2 years’ imprisonment, 5 if done by several people in collusion.

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Today -100: September 15, 1915: Of prohibition, hesperians, crown princes, and idiots & irresponsibles

A South Carolina referendum decides 2 to 1 in favor of prohibition.

Germany is vehemently and officially denying that the Hesperian was sunk by a German sub. Which it was. When they were making that claim a week ago it could have been down to irregular communications with u-boats, but after this much time, they have to just be lying, presumably because the sub that torpedoed the Hesperian was the same one that sunk the Lusitania.

Fog of War (Rumors, Propaganda and Just Plain Bullshit) of the Day -100: the German crown prince is said to have gone insane during the Argonne campaign but refuses to give up his command.

The Anglo-French Commission is planning to float a $1 billion loan in the US to pay for munitions and other American war-related exports. The Wilson Administration is quietly looking the other way. German-Americans are threatening to withdraw funds from any banks, for example in heavily German Milwaukee, participating in the loan.

The Detroit Free Press accuses Austria of subsidizing German-, Hungarian-, and Polish-language newspapers in the US.

Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador to Turkey, wants to raise a fund of $1 to $5 million to save Armenians from the genocide and bring them to the US.

Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor urges organized labor to fight for women’s suffrage. “Women cannot assume equal rights with men in the industrial struggle while classified with idiots and irresponsibles in political affairs.” Donald Trump supporters?

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Today -100: September 14, 1915: A German, even though every kindness be shown to him, remains always a German

Headline of the Day -100: 

Revolution? Unpossible!

It seems there are many who believe that Russia is doing so badly in the war because of German influence in the government. Also, the officials responsible for procuring munitions have prioritized maximizing procuring bribes, often 10% of the value of the contracts, for themselves. It would also help if they checked that the shells they were buying fit Russian cannons rather than German ones, as was the case with those sent to Warsaw right before it fell.

Headline of the Day -100: 

She says as a Dane she’s hated the Germans since they took Schleswig-Holstein, but just had to keep quiet, even when German immigrants were given high positions. “A German, even though every kindness be shown to him, remains always a German.”

Thomas Edison wins a contract to supply the Navy with 365 gun-firing batteries (one for every day of the year, I guess) for battleships. He was the only bidder willing to accept the government terms that if a battery fails within 8 years he has to refund double its price.

The Swedish Socialist Party expels several members who wrote a book advocating that Sweden fight on the side of Germany.

Opening on Broadway: Hit-the-Trail Holliday, by George M. Cohan, starring Fred Niblo (his brother-in-law) as a Billy Sunday-style temperance preacher. The NYT (Alexander Woollcott?) finds it “distinctly second-rate,” largely blaming Niblo and saying the part would have been better performed by Cohan himself (who will take the lead in the now lost 1918 film version) or by Douglas Fairbanks (who Niblo, much better a director than he was an actor, will direct in some of his more famous roles). The play, the review says – oh, it has to be by Woollcott – is “no more than nearly beer.”

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Today -100: September 13, 1915: A singing what now?

Brooklyn and Newark police arrest a “new type of thief,” one of a gang stealing films, after 250,000 feet of film were found to be missing from Mutual offices. Since there are so many movie theatres, it’s easy to market stolen movies.

The NYT praises the work of the state constitutional convention – and really praises Elihu Root, whose name I will never stop finding amusing. The convention has finished rewriting the constitution, extensively reorganizing and simplifying government administration and making a lot of offices no longer elective (the “short ballot”) and moving some decisions, like teacher pay, from the state to the local level (“home rule”). It now just needs to be voted on by the electorate. Which will reject it.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 12, 1915: I will not be interviewed

The Evening Sun quotes German Ambassador to the US Count von Bernstorff as saying that if there is a diplomatic breach, U-boats will be ordered to sink every ship they see, which will lead to war. Bernstorff denies saying any such thing and adds that he didn’t give the paper an interview and never gives interviews, and he can’t comment on the purported interview because that would be giving an interview. (No, really, that’s what he says.) The Sun responds that they never said it was an interview, just that they’re in a position to state what Bernstorff’s views are. Bernstorff says he won’t confirm or deny that those are his views, because that would be giving an interview. It’s hard to argue with such logic.

Irish people in the US are raising funds for weapons for an uprising in Ireland. The “Defense of Ireland Fund” says that the British government is buying up riot shrapnel, whatever that is, from the US in order to put down protests in Ireland against conscription (conscription won’t actually be introduced in Ireland until 1918).

The NYT Sunday book review section has an article by Joyce Kilmer on the late war poet Rupert Brooke. “It is true that if it were not for the war he would not now be dead. It is also true that if it were not for the war he would not now be certain of literary immortality.” So, swings and roundabouts, yeh?

Headline of the Day -100: 

Local 41 of the New York Federation of Musicians objects to the use of school, church and other bands composed of children performing at civic events (specifically, they’ve filed a complaint against Mardi Gras celebrations on Coney Island), as being bad for the children and for musicians trying to support their families.

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