Today -100: July 31, 1919: Of race riots, surplus food, and women’s suffrage

Chicago race riots, Day Four. At least 5 more dead, a lot of arson, mostly in the Black Belt of the South Side, which is running out of food. Gov. Frank Lowden (R) is in town and could actually observe a white mob chasing two black men in front of his hotel. Mayor Thompson finally asks the governor for troops. 15,000 rifles are removed from high schools, which are evidently really well armed (for cadet drills). US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer says the race riots in Chicago and D.C. are from local causes, not Bolshevik propaganda.

The War Department starts selling off its surplus food, through the post offices. Postmasters and mail carriers will work as salesmen.

Montana ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment, with just one legislator dissenting. 13 down, 23 to go.

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Today -100: July 30, 1919: Germany is not dead

Third day of the Chicago race riots. 28 dead so far, 500 injured. Okay, I’m gonna say what the NYT seems unwilling to say: most of the whites actively participating in this, invading the Black Belt of Chicago in groups looking for a fight, that sort of thing, are Irish (including, very probably, future mayor Richard Daley). About as many whites are getting killed as blacks, because this is not the South. The cop who at the start of all this refused to arrest the white man/youth who threw the stones at the black kids’ raft, resulting in the drowning of one of them, is suspended. For some reason we still have no name for that black kid.

The trans-Atlantic steamship Chicago leaves Bordeaux for Chicago 4 days late because the French crew was on strike for better wine (they get a quart a day).

Italian Prime Minister Franceso Nitti, noting out that France is looking for alliances with the distant United States and with England, “which has not ceased to be an island,” but not with Italy, begs for such an alliance. “Germany is not dead,” he points out.

France is still refusing to allow the US to repatriate the bodies of dead soldiers, because it might lead to an epidemic and because they’re not letting French families retrieve their war dead.

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Today -100: July 29, 1919: The present race riots are no surprise to me

The race riots in Chicago continue. 14 known dead today, 9 of them white. Knives, guns, stones. State’s Attorney Maclay Hoyne says “The present race riots are no surprise to me... The police department is so demoralized by politicians, both black and white, on the South Side that the police are afraid to arrest men who are supposed to have political backing.” He says “a certain white politician” has been distributing guns to “vicious colored persons who would be likely to engage in race rioting.” Hoyne is running for mayor.

The Arkansas Legislature ratifies the women’s suffrage Amendment. 12 down, 24 to go.

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Today -100: July 28, 1919: Furious race riots are the worst kind

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The precipitating factor: some blacks on a raft drifted into the white section of the 29th Street beach (the unofficial white section; there is no legal segregation in Illinois). White beach-goers attacked them with stones, killing a black on a raft and a white swimmer. It escalated from there after a white cop refused to arrest the white man who threw the rock that killed Eugene Williams, l17, eading to street brawls, shooting, and I think arson. This is Day One. There was a good article in the Chicago Tribune earlier this month.

Washington DC’s race riots seem to be over, and the troops brought in last week have been removed. The state of Maryland is demanding the extradition of a black man accused of assaulting a white woman, but the DC police are refusing because they believe his alibi and that he’d be lynched as soon as he was handed over.

The NYT accuses “Reds” – defined as the IWW, Socialists, and Bolsheviks – of conducting a “vicious and apparently well financed propaganda” to “stir up discontent” among negroes. It quotes one of these vicious publications, shown to it by an unnamed federal official, calling viciously for “a new society – a society of equals, without class, race, caste, or religious distinctions.” Vicious.

And in an editorial, the Times darkly asserts, “It is rather hard to believe that in such widely separated cities as Washington and Chicago there could be an outbreak of violent racial animosity within a certain number of days, and all without influence or suggestion from any outside source.” It goes on to suggest that the IWW propaganda among the negroes follows the German-pacifist propaganda early in the Great War. It doesn’t explain how the IWW got a white racist to throw rocks at black kids on a raft. It warns: “the worst enemies of the negro race are those who may have incited them to stir up a dormant feeling which cannot result in anything but injury to them.”

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Today -100: July 27, 1919: Of aerial marriage, broken men, and food blackmail

At an event for the (NYC) Police Pension Fund, Army Aviation Corps Lt. Alexander Wouters is married to Emily Schaeffer while both are up in a plane. The clergyman is in another plane, conducting the service over radio telephone, broadcast through megaphones to the crowd. As you do.

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The Peace Conference will offer Hungary food relief and a lifting of the blockade... if it overthrows the Béla Kun government. 

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Today -100: July 26, 1919: At such a time as this to indulge in faction for the sake of faction would, indeed, be a criminal enterprise

Pres. Wilson says US troops will remain in Siberia to keep the Siberian Railroad going and certainly not to interfere in Russian affairs, perish the thought.

The French Chamber of Deputies discusses the mistreatment of non-white French soldiers by US military police in French ports. We don’t get details because the French government really doesn’t want them discussed, but reading between the lines it sounds like the MPs were trying to keep soldiers from the French overseas territories & colonies away from white women.

Pres. Wilson tightens the restrictions on sales of guns to Mexico.

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill denies that he intends to form a Centre Party, as previously reported, he just wants to prevent British politics going back to the old party system. In these times, everything should be national national national. “What a time to play such a game in now that our country has arrived at the supreme pinnacle of splendor and of power... At such a time as this to indulge in faction for the sake of faction would, indeed, be a criminal enterprise.”

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Today -100: July 25, 1919: Doomed jazz is the best kind

Republican senators are curious about why Pres. Wilson has failed to submit (or even show them) the treaty in which the US & Britain agreed to defend France.

A black man accused of assaulting a white woman is lynched in Gilmer, Texas.

There was also a lynching two months ago in Milan, Georgia, of a 72-year-old black man who killed a white man “in defense of a negro woman.”  Milan officials succeeded in keeping the story secret until now because, they said, it would help them track down and arrest the lynchers. Which of course they have not done. In a couple of days, Gov. Hugh Dorsey will offer a $1,000 reward, to which a local doctor adds $500.

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Doomed, doomed I tell you!  In other news, there’s an “Imperial Society of Dancing Teachers.”

The Georgia state legislature rejects the women’s suffrage amendment. Both houses, wasn’t even close. Some of them are upset that Woodrow Wilson dared to ask them to pass it.

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Today -100: July 24, 1919: Of interpretations

Lenin has supposedly offered to cede Bessarabia to Romania if it prevents Ukrainians and Adm. Kolchak’s forces crossing through Romania.

William Howard Taft offers some “interpretations” of the League of Nations Covenant that he thinks will make it acceptable to the Senate, including no ban on war, the US being able to impose tariffs or racist immigration bans, the Monroe Doctrine, etc. Taft proposes these interpretations in a letter to Will Hays, chairman of the RNC, suggesting that the former president’s name be kept out of it, since some R. senators don’t like him. Taft thinks Wilson would accept the reservations, which is not the impression Wilson is giving to the senators he’s meeting.

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Today -100: July 23, 1919: Of invasions and race riots

An army of soldiers from Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, and the French colonies is preparing to invade Hungary.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voting on party lines, rejects Wilson’s request that they approve a provisional appointment of a US representative on the Reparations Committee.

More race rioting in DC, with a couple more dead. Soldiers are patrolling the streets (hopefully not the same soldiers who were rampaging a few days ago). Machine guns are deployed but not used.

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Today -100: July 22, 1919: Of blazing blimps, carnivals of inquisitions, race riots, and cows

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Extra points for “Blazing Blimp,” NYT headline writer. It’s a Goodyear Blimp, by the way. Most of the dead (which will reach 13) are bank employees; the crew escaped the falling, blazing blimp by parachute, except for a mechanic whose parachute caught fire. $50,000 in government bonds are burned up (or so the bank says). Chicago will bring in new rules about blimps flying over the city.

(from the Chicago Tribune)

The prohibition enforcement bill (the future Volstead Act) continues to steamroller through Congress. One amendment allows people to serve liquor to “bona fide guests” in their house. An amendment that possession of alcohol should be taken as prima facie evidence of intent to distribute fails. Rep. Nicholas Longworth (R-Ohio) notes that the 18th Amendment says nothing about possession and calls proposals such as the one to make people declare how much booze they have at home “a hodge-podge of all sorts of liberty-crushing legislation... it provides regulations which it will take an army to enforce.” Sacramental wine will be permitted (there will be a lot of sacraments performed over the next 14 years). Rep. Thomas Crago (R-PA) says the American people will reject the “carnival of inquisition” the bill will bring in.

Race riots continue in DC with 4 more dead. The local blacks are now organizing retaliation attacks against cops and random white people. The white soldiers and sailors who started all this were today confined to their camps.

The presumably white colonel in command of the negro 10th Cavalry denies that his men started a riot in Bisbee, Arizona earlier this month. He says local officials deliberately provoked the soldiers with various assaults, hoping for an excuse for the cops to shoot them down. He says the IWW has something to do with the plot, which makes no sense at all.

Pres. Wilson asks the Senate to approve an interim appointment of a US rep on the Reparations Committee, so the US can have some say on the committee even before the treaty is ratified, which Wilson is totally sure it will be. Republicans naturally think he’s trying to trick them into recognizing the treaty.

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Today -100: July 21, 1919: Of prohibition, treaties, independence, and dickmen

The US Senate is debating whether the prohibition enforcement law should include a ban on people keeping alcohol in their own homes (i.e., stocking up before prohibition comes in). The strict prohibitionists have been winning on every provision, including enforcing prohibition through temporary injunctions so that violators would be charged with contempt of court and imprisoned without any jury trial. It’s almost like they don’t believe prohibition will be popular.

The Peace Conference finishes the Austrian treaty. Austria will get Odenburg, which Hungary wants, and can which it could just take, since Austria’s army will be restricted to 30,000 men (without conscription). Big reparations, some of which are to be paid by countries like Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc that got Austrian territory, but those countries won’t be responsible for any of Austria’s war debt. Austria will have to give up cows (4,000 and 50 bulls to Italy, 1,000 to Serbia & Romania, etc). Also sheep and draft horses.

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Filipinos were told by the Wilson Administration to expect independence soon. Congressional Republicans decide nah.

Dirty-Sounding Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: July 20, 1919: Of POWs, red shit, race riots, and burning glasses

Germany still has 200-300,000 Russian prisoners of war. Poland, through which they would have to transit to reach Russia, is blocking their return.

Red Headlines of the Day -100:

Including, supposedly, a 70-year-old general (unnamed) for possessing weapons he kept as trophies.

and

Soldiers and sailors in Washington DC raid the negro part of town in response to rumors that some black guy attacked some white woman. There will be several days of this shit.

A Sunday Times Magazine article details the weapon that the British Royal Navy considered too fiendish to use: lasers.  Wait, what? “Burning glasses” –  giant lenses with mirrors and prisms to concentrate the rays of the sun at a distance, blowing up powder magazines and incinerating people.

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Today -100: July 19, 1919: Of secret non-treaties, explanatory reservations, nons, impeachment, and lynchings

The State Dept claims that the alleged late-war German-Japanese secret treaty, published by Izvestia last November, which the Senate demanded Wilson show them, is a hoax.

Pres. Wilson holds more one-on-ones with Republican senators, as well as Dem. Gilbert Hitchcock. He evidently tells the latter that giving Shantung, the German concession in China, to Japan is not “so iniquitous as it has been painted.” I have no idea why the R’s are making such a big deal of that particular detail. Wilson’s chats with senators today seem to have focused on whether reservations the Senate might attach to ratification are interpretative or explanatory, which I’m sure is a very important distinction indeed.

The French Senate’s Electoral Committee rejects the women’s suffrage bill passed by the Chamber of Deputies.

Justice Dept investigators are trying to find out who had petitions printed calling for Pres. Wilson’s impeachment. They claim they just want to find out if it’s part of enemy propaganda. Sure they do.

Members of an Alabama lynch mob are convicted for the first time in the state’s history.

Yes, the victim was white. However did you guess?

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Today -100: July 18, 1919: Of kuns, fucking Alabama, and corsets

Béla Kun is ousted in Hungary, the NYT reports prematurely, citing “reliable sources.”

The other allies are putting the peace treaty arrangements into effect in Germany, hampered by the failure of the US to do its share while the Senate decides whether to ratify the treaty. There are 23 commissions called for in the treaty to administer it, and the US can’t name delegates to them. The US peace commissioners are no longer voting on policy matters.

Woodrow Wilson holds his first three conferences with senators, all of whom (without disclosing what was said in the meetings) say they have not changed their minds about the peace treaty.

The Alabama State Senate rejects the women’s suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, 19-13.

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Today -100: July 17, 1919: Of saws, concentrated growls, vons, centres, and carrier pigeons

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Former House speaker Champ Clark calls the policy of Senate Republicans “one concentrated growl.”

Pres. Wilson will invite 15 key Republican senators to the White House to try to persuade them to support the League of Nations. He will talk to them individually, not in a group.

Birkenfeld, pop. 45,000, declares itself a republic, independent of (Allied-occupied) Oldenburg.

The German National Assembly rejects a Socialist proposal to do away with ranks of nobility. However, there will be no special privileges associated with the “von.”

British Secretary of War Winston Churchill, who in his political career has already switched parties once (from Tory to Liberal), suggests that a Centre Party be formed from the moderates of all parties, a sort of continuance of the wartime Coalition, but to fight Bolshevism and keep Lloyd George in power.

The carrier pigeon that escaped from the R34 dirigible shows up on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. He’s kind of tired.

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Today -100: July 16, 1919: Of murderers, ultimata, secret treaties, and mail

Headline of the Day -100: 

From the never-ending libel case by Ford against the Chicago Tribune.

There’s a rumor that French Gen. Franchet d’Esperey gave an ultimatum to Béla Kun, leftie leader of Hungary, demanding he and his government resign in favor of a freely elected one, or face invasion and occupation. Kun probably realizes that d’Eesperey simply does not have nearly enough troops at his disposal for that.

The US Senate asks Pres. Wilson for a copy of a treaty allegedly signed between Germany and Japan last October for a separate peace.

Mail service between the US and Germany is ordered resumed.

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Today -100: July 15, 1919: Of booze, dirigibles, and java

The attempts to repeal wartime prohibition or loosen the definition of intoxicating beverages are defeated in Congress.

Britain is sending forth another dirigible, the R33, which will visit India by way of France, Switzerland, Rome, and Cairo.

The latest suggested location for former kaiser Wilhelm’s exile: Java (Indonesia).

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Today -100: July 14, 1919: We want breakfast

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“Wets” think they can repeal wartime prohibition, which is still in effect until demobilization is complete. Or if that fails, remove the definition of “intoxicating,” leaving it to the courts.

Sen. Elihu Root thinks the Senate can ratify the peace treaty after unilaterally adding reservations, without the Peace Conference  having to act on them. Really?

The British dirigible R34 ends its round-trip trans-Atlantic crossing, arriving at Pulham, England after a 75-hour trip from Long Island, a day of which was spent lost in the fog. “We want breakfast,” Major Scott says. He predicts there will soon be regular airship service between Europe and America. During the trip, one of the carrier pigeons escaped.

The Allies are considering headquartering the League of Nations in an internationalized part of Belgium in a new city, Geopolis, which would be built on some part of the Front. Which I guess would have the advantage of having literal buried unexploded mines alongside the metaphorical ones.

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Dr. H.A. Zettel, a St Paul, Minnesota electropath, challenges Dr. H.W. Hill of the Minnesota Public Health Association to a duel... with germs. They will each expose themselves to typhoid, smallpox, bubonic plague, etc. Zettel, who does not believe in the germ theory, will protect himself from these diseases using only sanitation, pure air, and clean food and drink, while Hill will use vaccines. Whichever one survives will be a pallbearer at the other’s funeral. Sadly, they will not go through with it.

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Today -100: July 13, 1919: Of innocent policemen, daylight saving, the Three Pashas, horses, and prohibitionists

Irish Unionist leader Edward Carson tells Americans to butt out of Northern Irish affairs (totally missing the irony of a Unionist complaining about outside interference in Ireland). He blames them for stirring up Sinn Féin and thereby encouraging “the campaign of assassination of innocent policemen”. He also complains that nationalist Count Plunkett is allowed into the Carlton Club.

Pres. Wilson vetoes the Agriculture Bill because it repeals daylight saving. He also vetoes the Sundry Civil Bill because it only appropriates $6 million to rehabilitate disabled military men and he wants $8 million.

A Turkish court martial condemns Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha (no relation), the leaders of the previous government that messed up the war so badly and killed so many Armenians, to death. In absentia – they all fled into exile at the end of the war. Some lesser officials are given lesser sentences. Over the next couple of years Armenians will assassinate Talaat and Djemal in retaliation for the genocide.

John “Chick” Owens, a black vaudeville actor, is stabbed to death by a man who tried to bum a cigarette and was offered only the makings.

Édouard de Billy, France’s deputy high commissioner to the United States, slated to be the next ambassador to the US, falls off his horse in the Bois de Boulogne and breaks his neck. Silly de Billy.

Hashtag of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 12, 1919: Of corn

Sen. George Moses (R-New Hampshire) will offer a resolution inviting Pres. Wilson to come to the Senate every day at 10 am to discuss the treaty. He admits this is intended to prevent Wilson stumping the country on behalf of the League of Nations.

The Allies will end the blockade of Germany today.

The Corn Products Refining Company of Argo, Illinois will, as a result of its recent bloody strike, fire all its foreign-language-speaking workers.

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