Today -100: March 31, 1921: Nobody has a right to send for me

Attorney General Harry Daugherty says the US will settle down in a year or two and start obeying Prohibition laws.

More details about former Austro-Hungarian emperor Charles’s visit to Budapest. On arrival, he changed into a general’s uniform, went to the royal palace and demanded entrance, then sent for Admiral Horthy, who was eating dinner. Horthy replied, “At present I am head of the Hungarian state. Nobody has a right to send for me.” Their meeting went about as well as that beginning portended, and Charles agreed to leave the country. Bishop Count János Mikes, who hosted him, has been arrested, along with several monarchist army officers (the leg of his journey through Austria has also led to arrests). The worry is that Gen. Anton Lehár (brother of  operetta composer Franz Lehár), who has his own power base in West Hungary, a disputed region which is supposed to go to Austria, will support Charles’s ambitions. Horthy is censoring all news of this. The Little Entente (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania) warns Austria that if Charles is allowed to remain in that country they will invade and warn Hungary that any restoration would be a casus belli.

NJ Assemblyman Dr. Walter Alexander presides as acting Speaker, which is notable in that he is black and indeed the first black man elected to the NJ Legislature, in 1920. His parents were slaves.

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma Legislature is considering impeaching Democratic Gov. James Robertson. A special committee accuses him of “waste and incompetency,” excessive clemency to convicts, graft, tax evasion, threatening legislators representing the area containing the University of Oklahoma with funding cuts if they didn’t vote with him, etc.

The Dept of Agriculture asks Americans to eat more onions.

Parents in Westfield, Massachusetts are giving their children sugar lumps soaked in ether to reduce their appetites.

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Today -100: March 30, 1921: Of exiles, newspaper bans, and mumps

Charles, the 33-year-old exiled former emperor of Austria-Hungary, sneaks into Austria disguised as a Tyrolean tourist, with his mustache shaved off, travels to Vienna to chat with some monarchists, and then to Budapest, where he speaks to Admiral Miklós Horthy, the “regent” of Hungary, presumably about becoming king of Hungary, which his followers have convinced him is something Hungary is just panting for. It isn’t and neither is Horthy, who suggests he go back to exile in Switzerland. Which he doesn’t. Also, Austria may not give him safe passage, since he broke his pledge not to leave Switzerland.

More sporadic fighting in Germany, with the authorities generally beating back the Communist insurgents.

Georgia Gov. Hugh Dorsey wants an early trial for John Williams, the planter who kept black slaves (I think he acquired them by bailing out prisoners, and the articles use the word peonage rather than slavery, but the articles are curiously silent on this detail) and his black assistant Clyde Manning for the murders of 11 of them. There have been rumors of a black uprising, but it seems they were started by Williams’ 3 sons hoping to stir up a race war to get him out of prison. 

The Cincinnati City Council passes an ordinance banning any books, pamphlets, or newspapers – and we mean you, Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent – that hold any race, creed or religion up to ridicule or tend to cause race prejudice.

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This is Crown Prince George of Greece and Princess Elisabeth of Romania.

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Today -100: March 29, 1921: Of chief justices, barricades, and little tramps’ little mums

The NYT has information, “of a character sufficiently definite to furnish good ground for credence,” that Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Douglass White will soon resign and Harding will appoint former president Taft to replace him. White really wants Taft to succeed him, and the assurance that he would do so is the basis of the (false) belief that he will soon resign. In fact, he will soon die. Taft named White chief justice in 1910, despite White being a Democrat who was appointed associate justice by Grover Cleveland.

Berlin is barricaded against the communist insurrection. In Halle, all phone calls are required to be in German, because of course Russians are behind all this.

Charlie Chaplin’s mother Hannah is temporarily detained at Ellis Island because of her mental health history, which this article claims is shell shock from World War I air raids, which it very much isn’t. Chaplin has been lobbying officials for two years for her to be allowed into the US.

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Today -100: March 28, 1921: Of bulls, jazz, parades, and bombs.

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Hungary bans jazz. Also the foxtrot.

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Several bombs go off in Berlin, presumably set by Communists. The German government is blaming Russia for all the disturbances, as was the custom.

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Today -100: March 27, 1921: Of evilly disposed people and congresses of freaks

A British general warns that due to the number of “evilly disposed people” in Londonderry, the military will fire on sight on anyone with a gun. That general’s name: General Allgood.

“Home Rule” will start on April 19th, when both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland parliaments are due to open. Elections will follow in May. Which seems kind of like the wrong way around.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is coming to Madison Square Garden. The ad features a drawing of a terrifying clown

and promises “carnivals of 100 capering clowns,” which is surely the stuff of (alliterative) nightmares. Also the “only gorilla in captivity.” And a “Congress of freaks” (but I repeat myself).

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Today -100: March 26, 1921: This man tried to assassinate the United States Government

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It’s the road commissioners who have “Czar-like authority,” according to new Gov. Thomas McRae (D). And the road taxes do seem to be insanely high, although strangely there is no evidence that Arkansas now has tens of thousands of miles of top-notch roads on which to totter.

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes says no economic relations with Russia until it changes its political and economic system and gives “firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of contract and the rights of free labor.”

The NYT complains that Eugene Debs was allowed out of prison to talk pardon with the attorney general. Why, it asks, “is he treated, not as the dangerous criminal he is, but as a persecuted saint”. “This man tried to assassinate the United States Government.” 

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Today -100: March 25, 1921: Mr. Debs Goes to Washington

John Williams, a white farmer in Jasper County, Georgia, is indicted for the murder of 3 of his black employees he’d been keeping in peonage, although another (black) employee, Clyde Manning, says Williams actually killed 11 men, some dumped in the Yellow River, some in the Alcovy River, and some buried. Manning murdered some of them at Williams’ direction.

Two Italian Fascists challenge the head of the Russian commercial delegation in Rome to a duel.

The Communist uprising in Hamburg and other cities in Germany “is believed to be receding”.

Eugene Debs comes to Washington to discuss a possible presidential pardon with Attorney General Harry Daugherty. They let him out of prison and let him make his way from Atlanta to DC without any guards, expecting him to return when his conference is over. Which of course he will. At his trial Debs acted as his own lawyer, so who else would meet Daughtery?

Yup, Greece has invaded Turkey.

A bomb explodes in the Diana theatre in Milan, killing 31. Possibly thrown by anarchist(s). Fascists wreck the office of the anarchist newspaper Humanita Nova on general principle, as well as offices of the Syndicalist Union and the Socialist Club.

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Today -100: March 24, 1921: A minor state of siege

Violence in Ireland is ramping up. In various attacks on police in retaliation for executions, the IRA mostly lose, but a bunch of cops die too. The government plans to continue with the executions. And with elections in May for the two parliaments in North and South Ireland.

Germany defaults on the payment of 1 billion marks gold, which is equivalent to some money, saying it can’t pay and it disputes the Allied valuation of reparations already paid in goods.

There’s a Communist uprising in Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig, etc. The Senate (whether state or federal is unclear) declares a “minor state of siege.”

Greece has probably gone to war with Turkey.

The Chicago police ban the sale of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent on the streets, following a petition from a Jewish Republican group. There’s a similar ban in Toledo, imposed after a newsboy selling it was beaten up.

A group representing movie theatres in California bans the film Fate, starring Clara Smith Hamon, because it would “unduly and improperly put a premium on violence.” Let’s go back a bit. Jake Hamon was an Oklahoma oil man who took Clara as a mistress when she was 16 and he was 40. He paid his nephew to 1) marry her, and 2) leave the state immediately afer the marriage, so that Jake and Clara would have the same last name and could stay in hotels without awkward questions. Last summer Hamon went to the Republican convention to buy himself a candidate, any candidate, and wound up backing Harding in exchange for being named secretary of interior so that he could have access to the oil reserve at Tea Pot Dome. But it turned out that Florence Harding was distantly related to Hamon’s abandoned wife, and she insisted that Hamon return to his wife and children before being nominated. When Hamon told Clara that he was doing so last November, she shot him, and while he insisted before dying that he had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun, no one believed him and she was arrested and tried, though acquitted. And now she’s starring in a film, playing herself, although I can’t find any details about the exact plot of the film, which was never shown anywhere because of this sort of moral hissy fit.

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Today -100: March 23, 1921: Of jumping jacks, fire curtains, and new economic policies

The French parliament passes a bill to require physical training for the youth of both sexes.

Poland, pretending to reach out to the Jews (I phrase it that way because the article, presumably following the language used by Polish officials, keeps talking about “relations between the Poles and the Jews”), will stop special Jew taxes, such as those on Jewish hospitals.

While Russia wants to send a delegation to the US to discuss opening trade relations, the thing Commerce Secretary Hoover just said wouldn’t happen, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George explains to Parliament his reasoning for signing a trade deal: the Soviet regime ain’t going anywhere and we can’t rule out half of Europe and much of Asia and “just ring down the fire curtain and allow the fire to burn itself out.” He thinks the Russian Communists are coming to recognize that their system won’t and can’t work (he suggests the British Labour party should do the same).

What Lenin actually said to the 10th All-Russian Congress of the Bolshevist Party was that the government made mistakes in trying to transition to a peace economy, that Russia can’t depend on world revolution to save it since world revolution seems to be taking longer than anticipated for some reason. Peasants will be given more autonomy, paying part of their produce in a food tax but free to sell the remainder. This would be the famous shift from “War Communism” to the “New Economic Policy” (NEP).

France is considering dividing Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland in a way that sorta matches the voting in the plebiscite but just so happens to give most of the coal and other mineral resources to Poland.

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Today -100: March 22, 1921: Of Austens, constitutions, trade, unjust and violent methods, duels, and “bombs”

The new Tory party leader, following Andrew Bonar Law’s “retirement,” is Austen Chamberlain (brother of Neville). Under the terms of the Coalition, this makes him leader of the Commons.

The new Polish constitution bans corporal punishment. And coats of arms. It includes women’s suffrage and equal rights for all religions, but Jewish proposals to ban discrimination were rejected, so, yeah.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover opposes negotiating a trade agreement with Russia. He says Russia has nothing to sell and won’t as long as the Bolshevik economic system continues. In other words, the US policy is still that Russia’s government must be overthrown. Interesting that this statement of policy towards Soviet Russia comes from the secretary of commerce rather than the secretary of state or the, you know, president.

The plebiscite in Upper Silesia goes in favor of the province being part of Germany rather than Poland. The Allies may not abide by the results, and might give Poland those parts of Silesia that voted for Polish annexation, votes which Ger. Pres. Ebert attributes to “a resort to unjust and violent methods.” German newspapers have been writing a lot about “Polish terror”. Before the plebiscite, German newspapers in Silesia claimed (falsely) that Poland was going bankrupt and its currency was now worthless and the Warsaw Stock Exchange had closed down, so who’d want to join that? One reason for the pro-German vote: Germany has no draft while Poland has two years compulsory military service. Also, German factory owners were threatening to shut down their plants if they lost. Also, Germany brought in a lot of Germans with historical connections to the region but who don’t actually live there to vote (it was legal). Still, a lot of Poles must have voted to join Germany.

Dueling is now legal in Uruguay, which two army captains celebrate by dueling with pistols. The Uruguayan army is now short one captain.

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I believe I’ll leave you to make your own joke here.

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Today -100: March 21, 1921: Equal rights and no quarter asked

Over the weekend, IRA ambushes kill 11 of the Crown forces in Ireland, and there were numerous attacks on individuals like a court-martial judge, and a major melee in County Cork.

The Chamber of Commerce introduces a new slogan: “More Business Methods in Government, Less Government Management In Business.”

The National Woman’s Party also has a new slogan: “Equal rights and no quarter asked.” It’s planning to introduce a bill to remove all legal disabilities on women in federal laws. Before long, this will be the Equal Rights Amendment. A proposal to include disarmament among the NWP’s aims is turned down, Alice Paul saying it’s not a feminist issue.

A black man accused of killing a black woman is lynched in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 

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Today -100: March 20, 1921: Get ya paper!

A “young negro,” which I’m guessing means a teenager, is lynched in Water Valley, Mississippi.

Paper-sellers for Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent are warned by Detroit police to stop yelling out anti-Semitic quotes from the paper.

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Today -100: March 19, 1921: Now I want a dirigible

The government is going to publish the names of 160,000 draft dodgers and possibly prosecute them.

The commander of military headquarters (I guess for Ireland as a whole?) and the divisional commissioner of the Royal Irish Constabulary in Limerick send condolences on the murder of the city’s mayor. The Corporation responds, fuck you, you did it. Which they totally did.

The British government is giving away ten dirigibles, two of them seized from Germany, for free to anyone who wants them.

Russia, the Ukraine, and Poland sign a peace treaty. Poland gains land. Everyone agrees to refrain from propaganda against each other.

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Today -100: March 18, 1921: Humane death is the best kind of death. Or is it?

The Kronstadt rebels are defeated. Before the survivors scurry over the Finnish border, they blow up a couple of warships.

The Nevada Legislature passes a Humane Death Bill to introduce the gas chamber, although it will take several years before it is put into (humane) practice.

There are, inevitably, IRA reprisals for the execution of Thomas Whelan on Monday. A constable is killed and another wounded.

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Today -100: March 17, 1921: Of fickle blondes and cunning Orientals

Britain and Russia sign a trade treaty. It includes a cease-fire in the propaganda wars, with Russia specifically promising not to undermine British colonial rule in Asia.

Justice William Morris of NYC Municipal Court 1st District rules that a trial he is officiating will have a jury of 3 men and 3 women, but no blondes; “The blondes are fickle.” Then he dragooned 3 brunette women from the spectators.

The NYT profiles Soghomon Tehlirian, the Armenian who assassinated Talaat Pasha. Does it use the phrase “Oriental cunning”? Of course it does. How could it not?

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Today -100: March 16, 1921: This has nothing to do with you

Former Ottoman Grand Vizier (1917-8) Talaat Pasha, one of the leaders most responsible for the Armenian Genocide, is assassinated by an Armenian on the streets of Berlin. Seized by passersby, he tells the police, “We are both foreigners. This has nothing to do with you.” Talaat was a fugitive from international and Turkish justice, living under false names and hunted by British Intelligence.

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The Austrian Anti-Semitic Congress calls a world anti-Semitic congress for Budapest in the fall and creates a central bureau to connect anti-Semitic groups throughout the world. Resolutions call on the government to expel all alien Jews by the end of the month and to restrict the number of Jews in secondary night schools to their proportion of the population.

Gustav von Kahr, prime minister of Bavaria, tells the Bavarian legislature that the royalists have been conspiring to overthrow him and create chaos in order to produce a groundswell of popular opinion to bring back the Wittelsbach royal family.

There are 9,211,295 automobiles in the US. New York state alone has more registered cars than the whole US did in 1910.

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Today -100: March 15, 1921: I reared him to die for Ireland

The Brits execute six IRA men convicted by military courts-martial.  Many thousands of Dubliners gather at Mountjoy Prison, and all businesses are closed for several hours. The mother of one of them, Patrick Doyle, says “I am proud to have reared so good a boy and prouder still I reared him to die for Ireland.” Doyle’s widow collapses; today she will also bury one of their twins, born a couple of weeks ago.

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Today -100: March 14, 1921: What Austrians resent

A mob in Versailles, Kentucky lynches a black man accused of murder.

Former kaiser Wilhelm self-publishes a book, just for a few friends only at present, about how the whole world ganged up on Germany and the Great War wasn’t Germany’s fault.

The Austrian Anti-Semitic Association holds a mass meeting in Vienna, followed by some broken windows and Jew-beatings, as was the custom, but it was still early in the evening when this report was filed.

Edith Cowan is elected to  the Western Australia Legislative Assembly, the first woman member of an Ozzie parliament, defeating, in fact, the attorney general who introduced the legislation to allow women members. Cowan was a suffrage activist and promoted various social reforms for women. Interestingly, her father was executed when she was 15 for killing her step-mother.

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Today -100: March 13, 1921: What Denmark wants

The Harding Administration’s policy will be to protect all US rights, interests and equities gained during the Great War by right of conquest, even without a treaty conferring those rights. What this means, besides objections to Japan’s League of Nations mandate over the Yap Islands, is unclear.

The US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service claims to have discovered a liquid poison so strong that 3 drops, dropped, say, from an airplane via a nozzle, will kill a person. So a plane carrying 2 tons of it could clear an area 100 feet X 7 miles.

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Today -100: March 12, 1921: Of split infinitives, refugees, race riots, and laddie boys

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A letter from Pres. Harding to Adm. Benson calls on him “to immediately advise”.

8,600 Iroquois in Ontario are trying to arrange for asylum in the US to escape an order requiring them to take Canadian citizenship.

There’s a “race riot” in Springfield, Ohio following several days of tumult after an unknown black man allegedly assaulted a white girl, so they’ve been hassling every black man, one of whom shoots a cop trying to frisk him. 14 black people are shot and I guess just the one white cop. A white man is arrested while scattering dynamite in a negro district – to blow out stumps, he says.

Enrico Caruso is eating solid food.

Since the papers have been running stories about Warren Harding’s dog Laddie Boy – He brings Warren G’s newspapers! A negro messenger has been named unofficial Master of the Hounds! – here’s a picture, from Laddie Boy’s... Wikipedia page.

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