Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Today -100: November 18, 1920: Of royal plebiscites, poison gas, and where to go to get murdered


Deposed king Constantine of Greece says he doesn’t want to be the head of any political party, so if he is to graciously agree to return to the throne, there should be a plebiscite. “If the people of Greece want me I shall return to Athens, unless, of course, prevented by unjust force.” He wants to go home because Switzerland is too fucking cold, he says. The next prime minister, Dimitrios Rallis, tells the Allies that Constantine is “more pro-Greek than pro-German. He is also something of a militarist.” Keep that one in mind.

70,552 US soldiers were gassed during the war, of whom 1,221 died and 2,803 injured enough to be discharged.

The most murdery city in the US over the last decade was Memphis, at 55.9 homicides per 100,000. Which was actually an improvement. The safest city is Milwaukee, at 2.5.

Russia legalizes abortion.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Today -100: November 17, 1920: Of secret commissions, monarchist revolutions, and returning champs


The League of Nations sets up 6 commissions to do the actual work and make the actual decisions, with representatives of all 42 nations (wasn’t it 41 yesterday?), whose meetings are to be held in secret and with no minutes taken (there’s a fight about this).

Supposedly a right-wing revolution is brewing in Bavaria, aiming to make the state independent and restore its monarchy, and to negotiate not having to pay German war indemnities.

Dimitrios Rallis will be the new Greek prime minister, and by new I mean old; this is his 4th time in the job since the 1890s.

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Monday, November 16, 2020

Today -100: November 16, 1920: Of landslides, leagues, armistices, and chemical warfare


Greek elections produce a result no one, but no one, expected: Venizelos is out, the monarchist supporters of deposed king Constantine are in.

The League of Nations convenes. “All important countries of the world were represented in that Hall of Nations, except unhappy Russia, unrepentant Germany, uncertain America, and unasked Mexico.” 41 nations, count ‘em, 41.

Armenia and Turkey have an armistice, very much not in Armenia’s favor.

Russia captures Sebastopol. 

Fiume – pardon me, the Italian Regency of Quarnero – says the Treaty of Rapallo doesn’t count because it wasn’t represented. It expresses its own views as to what the border between Italy and Yugoslavia should rightfully be. Poet-Aviator-Duce Gabriele d’Annunzio personally leads his forces into Susak.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George defends his country’s continued work in chemical warfare in violation of the Treaty of Versailles (news of which just leaked) by saying one country not in the League of Nations, which he doesn’t name, is also doing poison gas experiments (is it Mexico? it’s probably Mexico, right?).

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Sunday, November 15, 2020

Today -100: November 15, 1920: Of unacceptable treaties, the Third International, refugees, and great train robberies


As the Rapallo Treaty is being signed, Poet-Aviator-Duce Gabriele d’Annunzio announces plans to seize some islands and other territory from Yugoslavia. The Fiume regime says Rapallo is unacceptable.

Achille Richard, who d’Annunzio once offered the post of foreign minister, says d’A will probably retire to a monastery. Spoiler Alert: no.

The Communist International sets hard-line rules for national communist parties wishing to join. There must be a “complete breach” with reformism and “center elements” and “social pacifism” and “notorious opportunists” (some of whom it names, including Karl Kautsky and Ramsay MacDonald). The Communist press must be under the complete control of the party executive, and all parties must be called the Communist Party of (Insert Country Here). CPs must support every movement for freedom in the colonies. Also centralism, iron discipline, purges of petit-bourgeois elements, blah blah blah.

Brazil offers free land to 2,500 Jewish Ukrainian refugee families in Romania.

Jewish organizations in the US call for Jews to resist a proselytization scheme by the Presbyterians in NYC.

A train robbery outside Omaha, Nebraska, nabs a US Mint shipment. The government denies this was a gold shipment. It was totally a gold shipment. The robbers are said to have gotten at least $20,000. In fact, it was in the millions. And none of them older than 17 (they haven’t been caught yet).

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Saturday, November 14, 2020

Today -100: November 14, 1920: Cork will remember his abduction


The League of Nations will convene Monday at a converted skating rink in Geneva. Swamped by delegates and their entourages, the good burghers of Geneva are price-gouging to the limit.

There’s a rumor that Britain will make Prince Albert, the Duke of York (the future George VI), the king of Ireland.

White general Pyotr Wrangel takes refuge in the Crimea on a French warship. The Russian Civil War is almost over. Wangel will live the rest of his life in exile in Turkey, Serbia, and Belgium, dying in 1928.

A notice signed “by order of the Black and Tans” is posted on the front door of the Cork Examiner offices, threatening that if a Cork Gaol warder kidnapped a month ago isn’t released within 48 hours, “Cork will remember his abduction.”

The NAACP says 30 to 60 black people were killed during election riots in Florida, and says the Justice Dept should annul the state’s vote.

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Friday, November 13, 2020

Today -100: November 13, 1920: The nation got value for his life


The 9 remaining hunger-strikers in Cork Gaol (2 died) give up their hunger strike on the 94th day under instruction from Sinn Féin, prodded by the Bishop of Cork, who said MacSwiney’s death had attracted world attention and “The nation got value for his life, but the continuance of the present strike is only a waste.” Oddly economistic language for a bishop.

The use of private automobiles in Ireland will be limited from December 1st, not allowed to be used at night and only within 20 miles of the owner’s home. In January existing permits expire and may not be renewed.

The British military will take over parts of the Irish railway system, which keeps firing employees who refuse to run trains carrying military or munitions and now has, like 5 employees left.

Col. Cecil L’Estrange Malone, an MP elected at the last election as a Liberal but is now the first Communist Party MP, is arrested in Dublin for a speech he made last week at the Albert Hall calling for revolution:“What are a few Churchills or Curzons on lamp posts compared to the massacre of thousands of human beings? What are a few Churchills or Curzons against a wall compared to the bombing of harmless Egyptians, compared with reprisals in Ireland?” He is let out on bail on condition he not make similar speeches. “He can, however, say what he likes in the House of Commons.” He will be sentenced to 6 months in prison for sedition and bound over. The prosecutor will say that Malone’s audience included many weak-minded aliens who might be inspired to loot, burn and murder.

Austria applies to join the League of Nations. Germany does not, but France would veto it anyway.

The marriage of Ann Wong Kee, age 12, who was sold by her foster mother to a laundryman in Binghamton who is described as elderly for $700, is annulled.

Mildred Harris and Charlie Chaplin are officially divorced. She gets a reasonably large settlement ($200,000) and agrees not to call herself Mildred Chaplin professionally.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s almost dramatic enough to make me read an article about baseball. Almost.

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Thursday, November 12, 2020

Today -100: November 12, 1920: Of unknown soldiers, home rule, Rapallo, and grateful and contented Haitians


France buries an Unknown Soldier and Britain buries an Unknown Soldier.

The Irish Home Rule Bill passes its 3rd Reading in the House of Commons, with a lot of talk about Armistice Day and reconciliation. Hey, says PM Lloyd George, that unknown soldier might even be Irish (there was no Armistice Day celebration in Dublin, although Belfast had a small, presumably celebratory, riot). Ireland, LG says, “should not in a moment of anger” – a several-hundred-year-long moment – “cast away an inheritance which is as much hers as ours, but join in the empire it helped to build and adorn.” He also claims to have documents proving that Sinn Féin was involved in a German plot in 1918, which he says proves that Britain has to keep complete control of Irish harbors forever. Also, a conscript army in Ireland would be a danger to Britain, and Ireland can’t be permitted a navy either. 

President-Elect Harding gives an Armistice Day speech in Brownsville, Texas. He says the US was not, in fact, fighting to make the world safe for democracy or for humanity’s sake, but only for our national rights (sending ships carrying munitions to one side in a war without getting blowed up, you know, those national rights). I know Woodrow Wilson gave self-righteous idealism a bad odor, but wow.

Italy and Yugoslavia have more or less completed negotiations for a treaty (Rapallo). Italy gives up Dalmatia (Italy already contains more Slavs than it feels comfortable with), Fiume is independent (for now) but contiguous with Italy, Italy gets a bunch of small islands in the Adriatic.

Rear Admiral Harry Knapp, who was sent to Haiti to “investigate” conditions under US occupation (he was the US’s military governor in St. Domingo, so, you know, totally objective). His investigation consisted of going, “unannounced,” to military camps and having commanders invite chosen Haitian citizens to meet him. They all expressed “gratitude” and “contentment.” So that’s okay then.




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Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Today -100: November 11, 1920: Of flags, shop closings, duels, and Chicago crooks


At the Capitol Theatre on Broadway a group of protesters trying to remove the British flag (among flags of other Great War allies) get into a fight with the police.

British troops tell owners of Dublin shops which closed for Terence MacSwiney’s funeral that they’d better also close for Armistice Day or their shops will be wrecked. And the British Embassy asks the US State Dept to do something about a cable sent by J.V. O’Connor, president of the Amalgamated Irish Societies of America, to the chief secretary for Ireland, I think, promising reprisals against English citizens in the US if there are any more reprisals in Ireland, at 3:1. It’s quite possible that neither J.V. O’Connor or the Amalgamated Irish Societies of America actually exist.

Rep. Finis Garrett (D-Tenn.) is arrested for driving drunk and running over a Post Office clerk.

Léon Daudet, monarchist member of the French Chamber of Deputies and a frequent duellist before the war, declines a challenge from another deputy, saying “Dueling is a foolish practice and there is no place for it in France since the war.”

Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson fires Police Chief John Garrity and appoints his own secretary for the purpose of “ridding Chicago of crooks.” Who would that leave? Chicago cops are being investigated for providing protection for saloons.

What to See: George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House at the Garrick, reviewed by Alexander Woollcott.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Today -100: November 10, 1920: Violence is the sad inheritance of war


Headline of the Day -100:  


In Texas, he lands a seven-foot tarpon, except when he restaged the struggle for the movie cameras the fish got away. That may be some sort of metaphor.

Japanese PM Hara plays down California’s latest racist land law, saying it’s just a sectional agitation that won’t affect relations between the two countries.

Only a few people are killed and only a few bombs thrown during Italy’s elections. PM Giolitti says “Violence is the sad inheritance of war.”

Immigration Commissioner Frederick Wallis claims that 25,000 “Soviet propagandists” are trying to come to the US via the Netherlands. They’re coming as stowaways or seamen in order to avoid the questions asked of immigrants at Ellis Island.

8 dead French soldiers are dug up at Verdun so that one can be chosen as the Unknown Soldier. The other seven will be dumped in the Seine at midnight, I’m assuming. Each unknown is coming from one of the 9 sectors of the Front (they’re skipping the 9th sector, where French and German bodies are mixed together in mass graves).

The pope saw an Italian movie called The Holy Bible (I can’t find it on imdb) and was shocked by seeing Adam and Eve naked, so he tried to get the film destroyed and, failing that, bans Catholics from seeing it.

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Monday, November 09, 2020

Today -100: November 9, 1920: You are hiding the republic behind the body of a dead soldier


The Supreme Court rules that liquor for personal use may legally be stored in a warehouse and transported. However some states, such as Illinois, have their own laws against this.

In Parliament, Prime Minister David Lloyd George calls the shooting dead of a pregnant woman holding a baby by police in Keltaran, County Galway, “one of those unfortunate accidents that always happen in war.” Queried about the war thing, he says “It is war on the other side. It is rebellion.”

The laughable Irish Home Rule Bill is working its way through Parliament, with the government adding provisions that if half the members of the two devolved parliaments (North and South) aren’t properly elected or fail to show up the bodies can be dissolved and their powers given to a committee named by the Lord Lieutenant. Both parliaments can set up an upper house (or not, it sounds like). The usual oath to the Crown has been dropped.

The French government decides that the unknown soldier to be buried on Armistice Day will go under the Arc de Triomphe rather than the Pantheon. At the same time the heart of long-dead prime minister Léon Gambetta will go the Pantheon. In the National Assembly, socialist Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux objects to the funding for the unknown soldier: “You are hiding the republic behind the body of a dead soldier.” Worst. Game of Hide and Seek. Ever. His complaint is that the anti-republican Right forced this amalgamation of Armistice Day with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Third Republic, which should have been celebrated in September.

D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, that novel about Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling nekked, is published in New York but not London because its predecessor The Rainbow is still banned in Britain. I don’t seem to have underlined any passages in my copy (also, I can’t believe I was ever able to read such tiny print; jesus, Penguin).

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Sunday, November 08, 2020

Today -100: November 8, 1920: Reds shall not pass


Turkey says it won’t ratify the peace treaty for the foreseeable future.

Cops shot in Londonderry, retaliation arson on alleged Sinn Féiner-owned properties. And rioting in Belfast.

Headline of the Day -100:  


Spoiler Alert: The Reds shall totally pass.

Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes says the League of Nations will not be allowed to complain about the White Australia policy, which is as necessary to Australia’s defense as the Monroe Doctrine is for the US or freedom of the seas to the British. 

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Saturday, November 07, 2020

Cheer up, Donnie, there are worse ways to be removed from public life



(I originally composed this post, prematurely, on November 2, 2004. I was very cross that I didn't get to use it.)

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Today -100: November 7, 1920: We can’t do much worse than the men


Asquith calls for a truce in Ireland, which “has become the worst form of civil war.” Opposition to the policy of reprisals is growing, including from Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat).

Yoncalla, Oregon, pop. 323, votes out the city council in favor of an all-women ticket. They organized secretly, so the election results are a complete surprise, including to Mayor Jess Lasswell, whose wife is elected to the council. Another council member is also displaced by his wife. (A recent Atlantic article finds this story a little too pat to be true). Mayor-elect Mary Burt says “At the worst, we can’t do much worse than the men.”



Fess Whitaker, a county jailer in Letcher County, Kentucky, currently serving time in his own jail for a street fight, is elected county judge, so Gov. Morrow pardons him.

Alexander Woollcott reviews Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, which opened last week at the Provincetown Playhouse, NYC. He likes the play, hates the clumsy production, but likes the actor playing Brutus Jones, Charles Gilpin. Who is black. Eventually Gilpin will clash with O’Neill over the latter’s insistence on using the n–word (a lot), and will be replaced by Paul Robeson, who also starred in the abbreviated 1933 film version (which deployed the word 29 times). There’s a good but not great recent movie about the play and Gilpin, The Black Emperor of Broadway (could have used a different actor as O’Neill).

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Friday, November 06, 2020

Today -100: November 6, 1920: Of cycling, hip flasks, show trials, spheres of influences, and samoas


Disappointing Headline of the Day -100:  


Actually MOTORcycling, which is somehow so much less interesting a story. Anyway, 4 men are arrested and two are shot dead “attempting to escape,” as was the custom.

Chicago District Attorney Charles Clyne – which is a Chicago district attorney kind of name – threatens to close down cabarets that allow customers to bring in hip flasks.

The Russian government is collapsing, because the Russian government is always collapsing. The NYT claims that Lenin was put on trial, or a sort of trial in a theatre (yes, we’re all thinking it), by Bolsheviks who accuse him of graft and trying to make himself absolute ruler. This is supposed to have happened last month, but the outcome is not known. Another totally true report says 100 to 300 people are executed every day in Moscow.

France, Britain and Italy sign an agreement setting out their spheres of influence in Turkey. How very nineteenth-century of them. Oh wait, they signed it 3 months ago and it’s not a secret treaty but just happens to have been kept secret since August, got it.

Warren Terhune, governor of American Samoa, was suspended pending an investigation into his heavy-handed approach to the natives. Three days before a battleship bringing a Naval Board of Inquiry is due to arrive, he kills himself.

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Thursday, November 05, 2020

Today -100: November 5, 1920: Of deceased leagues, evaders not crusaders, pardons, pot-pourris of indiscretions, and ethnic cleansings


Harding says the League of Nations is “now deceased.”

Massachusetts voted Tuesday to legalize the sale of light wines and beer.

William Jennings Bryan, ever full of helpful advice, suggests that Woodrow Wilson should resign immediately, then Veep Whatsisname should appoint Harding as his secretary of state and then resign so that Harding becomes president next month instead of in March (the order of succession was different in 1920 than it is now). Then Harding could get on with that “association of nations” and world peace would be assured. Bryan is an idiot. He says that the reason he made no speeches during the campaign season was that the Democratic Party “has become a party of evaders and not crusaders.” He says Cox’s problem was that he was a prohibitionist in the West and a wet in the East.

Former Vermont Governor Horace F. Graham is convicted of embezzling state funds (when he was state auditor, before he was governor), and sentenced to 5-8 years. By the end of the day, his successor Gov. Percival Clement pardons him. They’re both Republicans. 

Margot Asquith, wife of the former prime minister, has written an autobiography, which has to be a first. Supposedly when she told Herbert she was getting £13,000 for it, he said “I hope they’re not worth all that!” Winston Churchill writes a review for The Daily Mail and questions are asked in the House about whether the secretary of state for war doesn’t have more important duties to attend to. The London Times calls the book “a scandal which cannot be justified or excused.” A “pot-pourri of indiscretions,” the Daily Chronicle calls it.

Cork Deputy Lord Mayor Donal O’Callaghan replaces the late Terence MacSwiney as lord mayor. Don’t know much about him, except he’s also Sinn Féin and doesn’t die in office, which must have made a nice change.

Blacks are fleeing Ocoee, Florida. White people are having to harvest the citrus crop, which is what happens when you drive the cheap labor out.

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Wednesday, November 04, 2020

Today -100: November 4, 1920: Of extreme voter suppression, and radium


In Ocoee, Florida, a black man is prevented from voting because he hasn’t paid the poll tax. He returns with a shotgun but is fought off. He comes back at night with a few of his friends, and a race war commences. A couple of the white posse are shot dead and 20+ buildings burned down with black people inside. The prospective voter, July Perry, is lynched. Several dozen blacks will be murdered and the remaining ones will be driven out of the town, never to return.

Headline of the Day -100:  



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Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Today -100: November 3, 1920: Pleased but not exultant


Headline of the Day -100:  


Harding gets 60.2% of the popular vote, a record, 16,152,200 votes to Cox’s 9,147,353.  Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs gets nearly 1 million votes, 3.4%.

Harding says he is “more given to prayer to God to make me capable of playing my part.” Spoiler Alert: God will say no.

Debs, from prison, says Socialists will sweep the 1924 elections. Spoiler Alert: yes, that will totally happen.

It’s a landslide for Republicans everywhere.

Thirty-four governorships were up for grabs. Republicans capture twenty-five. Alfred E. Smith, future Democratic candidate for president, loses his re-election bid for governor of New York to Nathan Miller (he’ll get it back in ‘22). 4 of the 5 Socialists the NY Legislature keeps refusing to take their seats are elected again (um, I think this is wrong), but the state senate gets its first Socialist ever, Edmund Seidel. The strong opposition of women who remembered US Sen. James Wadsworth Jr (R)’s vociferous opposition to women’s suffrage does not prevent his re-election.

In the House of Representatives, R’s gain 61 seats. They will have 299 v. 131 for the D’s. Socialist Victor Berger, expelled by the House in 1919, loses for re-election, but will be back. Meyer London of Manhattan is now the only Socialist. Other D’s losing their seats: former Speaker of the House Champ Clark, future secretary of state Cordell Hull.

Rep. Andrew Volstead (R-Minn.) of Volstead Act fame is re-elected. I must have missed this: he actually lost his primary, but the winner was disqualified for having libeled Volstead.

There’s a woman in the House again, the second after Jeanette Rankin, Oklahoma’s Alice M. Robertson, a 66-year-old spinster former teacher in Indian boarding schools and, um, president of the state Anti-Suffrage Association. Campaign motto: “I am a Christian. I am an American. I am a Republican.” She will serve one term.

The Republican majority in the Senate, slight in the 66th Congress, expands to 59-37.

In New Jersey, only one Democrat, Harry Runyon of Warren County, is elected to the Legislature’s lower house, meaning he’ll be on every single committee.

Eleanor Roosevelt casts her first vote.

Election judges in Savannah, Georgia, ignore the ruling that the registration period doesn’t apply to women this time and refuse to let black women vote. Why just black women, beyond the obvious? Evidently no white women showed up at the polls.

KDKA Pittsburgh begins operating, the first commercially licensed radio in the US (give or take), whose first broadcast is the election results.

California overwhelmingly passes the racist Alien Land initiative, making it illegal to lease to Japanese people or companies owned by them. It will be overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1952. A California ballot measure to ban vivisection fails. One to add kindergartens to the public school system succeeds.

Baron Pyotr Wrangel, the last White general standing, is carrying out a “strategic retreat.”

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Monday, November 02, 2020

Today -100: November 2, 1920: Of the civilization of the world, complacency, crude work, and opera


Gov. James Cox says if ever a campaign was based entirely on a great moral issue, it’s definitely his, “because the thing to be decided is whether the civilization of the world shall tie itself together into a concerted purpose to prevent the tragedies of war”.

Harding says he awaits the vote with complacency.

Harding’s father accosts Judge W.S. Spencer of the Marion County Probate Court on the streets of Marion, accusing him of spreading stories (yes, the secret negro thing, not that you’d know it from the NYT). Spencer denies it and knocks down a farmhand who claims to have heard him do so. Later in the day, Spencer signs an affidavit denying having spread the rumor and Dr. Harding apologizes.

Eight die in fights during Cuban elections.

Six cops are killed in Ireland, presumably in retaliation for Lord Mayor MacSwiney’s death. And Kevin Barry, an 18-year-old who killed a cop in September and was convicted by a military court-martial, is hanged. This will be a big deal because of his age. It’s the first execution of the Sinn Féin disturbances, unless you count the people killed by Black and Tans and other government hit squads.

Montgomery, Alabama cops, assisted, if I interpret the article correctly, by Klansman, have killed 3 black men and arrested 13 in an alleged gang that burned cotton mills, 3 black churches, and a couple of homes. The chief of the state Law Enforcement Department says “White men are not back of the lawlessness because the work is too crude.”

Although the Georgia attorney general ruled that the 19th Amendment overrode for the new women voters the state’s normal 6-month voter registration period, some precincts might reject women’s ballots anyway.

Paris Opera musicians are on strike. Musicians want to be paid according to the rarity and difficulty of their instruments, with extra pay, for example, for players of the heckelphone and sarrusophone. Also extra pay for musicians playing the French horn call in “Siegfried.” Male actors who put on blackface are to get an extra 5 francs, women 3 francs. Blueface (as in Salome) is also 5 francs.

(2020 Update: the Paris Opera is considering banning blackface, probably because they don’t want to pay that 5 francs.)

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Sunday, November 01, 2020

Today -100: November 1, 1920: Suffering humanity waits upon the voice of America


Today’s betting odds are still 6:1 in favor of Harding.

Cox says the fight for the League is over. Harding says the League is dead.

Cox says “Suffering humanity waits upon the voice of America. The vote on Nov. 2 means joy or despair, worldwide.”

The Italian government claims to have seized documents proving that the anarchist movement there is receiving huge sums of money from abroad.

Prince Paul says he’ll only accept the Greek throne if The People don’t prefer his dethroned father or elder brother. He doesn’t seem to have said how the populace are to make their wishes on this subject known.

Headline of the Day -100: 


This article comes the closest the NYT has yet come to explaining the nature of the whisper campaign (do pamphlets whisper?): “anonymous circulars giving ‘fake’ family trees, easily disproved by consulting the Harding genealogy”. I think the scare quotes around the word fake just indicate that the NYT considers the word to be slang.

KKK Imperial Wizard William Simmons orders all Klansmen to suppress the night riders burning cotton gins. Mostly because people think they’re Klansmen because they’re wearing similar clothes, which pisses Simmons off, probably because he gets a hefty cut from each set of Klan regalia sold.

Catholics march in Detroit to oppose a proposed amendment to the Michigan State Constitution banning parochial and other private schools (and compulsory attendance of children until 16 at public schools). Spoiler Alert: It will lose.

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Saturday, October 31, 2020

Today -100: October 31, 1920: The true patriot wants his country to be first in service, not first in selfishness


Cox’s odds have improved; betting is now 6:1 in favor of Harding.

Headline of the Day -100:  

I guess this RNC ad is how Republicans think the new women voters should be appealed to:


The Dayton Journal, owned by a former Republican governor of Ohio, publishes a refutation of the “unthinkable assault” on Warren G. Harding. What is the nature of that unthinkable assault? Maybe the Journal says, I don’t know, but the NYT does not, although the fact that rebutting it requires a complete investigation into Harding’s genealogy, dating back to the early 17th century, might give a hint. An editorial entitled “An Odious Attack” also fails to elucidate the nature of the attack.

Berks County, Pennsylvania Republican County Chair Thomas Seidel has Democratic court clerk Harvey Bausher arrested for criminal libel for circulating the circular about Harding’s supposed racial ancestry.

In Chicago, Gov. Cox tells the Good Samaritan story. Evidently Europe is the “broken and bleeding” wayfarer and the US should be the good Samaritan. “The true patriot wants his country to be first in service, not first in selfishness.”

500 Klansmen march through Jacksonville, Florida (and a couple of other Florida cities), at night, with torches, “supposedly as a warning to negroes to attempt no lawlessness at the polls Tuesday.”

The Bishop of Cork visits Cork Gaol and orders the hunger strikers to knock it off. They tell him no. He orders the nuns attending them to prepare food for them. They do not eat it.

I haven’t mentioned it because I haven’t been able to find it online, but the furor over a pro-Republican cartoon in Harvey’s Weekly that offended Catholics with a parody of a painting of the immaculate conception has been going on and on for days.


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