Today -100: December 31, 1922: Of people giving stuff away

With Al Smith due to take the NY governor’s office tomorrow, Tammany’s Boss Charles  Murphy takes a suite in the Hotel Ten Eyck in Albany so he can give out all the patronage jobs.

Henry Morgenthau, former US ambassador to Turkey, has a cunning plan: why not give Constantinople to Russia?

At the All-Union Congress of Soviets, Trotsky says after the forthcoming revolution in Europe, “America, that Babylonian tower of capitalism, will fall in ruins also.”

Looks like the NYT missed the news that the Congress created a new thing called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

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Today -100: December 30, 1922: I wouldn’t live long enough to smell the smoke

The Department of Agriculture is advertising for Americans to eat more meat. Lots and lots of meat. “Meat is the cornerstone of the diet in our Western civilization,” it says.

The Ku Klux Klan says it will investigate the Moorhouse County, Louisiana murders itself and “outlaw” any members found guilty. But that lynch mob wore black hoods and we wear white ones so it probably wasn’t us, they say. Meanwhile, former Mer Rouge mayor/cyclops Dr. Bunnie McKoin is resisting extradition from Maryland, saying “The sight of me would be the signal for the beginning of the greatest slaughter of human life this country has ever known. I wouldn’t live long enough to smell the smoke.” 

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Today -100: December 29, 1922: Of lynchings, guarantees, and Ulysses

2 confessions in Morehouse Parish, Louisiana implicate 45 people in the abduction and murder in August of Watt Daniels and Thomas Richards, the men whose bodies surfaced in Lake La Fourche showing evidence of having been tortured and mutilated (castrated, not that the NYT would ever use the word).

At the Lausanne Conference, the Allies & the US are demanding that the capitulations Turkey has abolished (treaties giving exemption from Turkish laws & taxes to foreigners) be replaced with “guarantees,” that is some form of special protection, such as foreigners only being tried by foreign judges, which for some reason Turkey claims would be an infringement of its sovereignty. Lord Curzon says Turkey’s legal system is based on Muslim law and its judges uneducated and lazy.

How have I missed until now that the British High Commissioner to Constantinople is named Sir Horace Rumbold? If you’re wondering about the name of his She Who Must Be Obeyed, it’s the scarily formidable Etheldred Constantia Fane.

James Joyce’s Ulysses is banned in the UK. It’s already banned in the US. It’ll be unbanned in the US in the ‘30s, not sure about UK.

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Today -100: December 28, 1922: Of dynamite, consulates, and Mosul

A 21-year-old Klansman, Wesley Holyoake, is arrested in Indiana with a couple of suitcases of dynamite. He says he used dynamite, although presumably not this dynamite, to attract attention to a cross-burning ceremony on Christmas Eve. As you do.

There are accusations that US District Attorney for western Louisiana P.H. Mecom has been interfering with the investigation into the Klan murder of those two guys whose bodies turned up in Lake La Fourche, threatening to arrest Justice Dept investigators, tipping off kluxers, etc.

Éamon de Valera aide Laurence Ginnell comes to New York and seizes the Irish Free State Consulate in the name of the Republic.

The Turkish position at the Lausanne Conference is now that if it doesn’t get Mosul (and its oil) (and its Kurds), it won’t sign a treaty about anything else it’s agreed to. Lord Curzon is more or less threatening war.

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Today -100: December 27, 1922: Of bunnies and wood

Dr. Bunnie McKoin, former mayor of Mer Rouge, Louisiana, is arrested at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for whatever his role might be in the KKK killings of 2 men in August. He says people hated him because as mayor until 1920 he tried to stop “such evils” as gambling and white men associating with black women. He accuses the deceased of having been bootleggers, gunmen, and men who kept black concubines. (Incidentally, McKoin has been accused of murder before, in 1916. If I ever find out what that was about, you’ll be the first to know.)

The Allied Reparation Commission declares Germany in default on wood deliveries, Britain voting against.

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Today -100: December 26, 1922: Dry Christmas

The NYPD claim the city experienced its driest Christmas ever. Not a single person charged with intoxication. Oh, and 6 people died of wood alcohol poisoning. 

Christmas:

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Today -100: December 25, 1922: Of boycotts and nonagenarians

14 members of the New Britain, Connecticut police dept refuse to attend drill because they heard that their instructor (who also works for the YMCA) attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, pardon, “klonkave.”

Ezra Meeker, who rode the Oregon Trail in an ox-cart and was the first mayor of Puyallup, Washington, will hold a dinner for his 92nd birthday in NYC, to which he’s inviting every man (just men?) over 90. He’s previously done this in Seattle. He’s serving possum soup, because of course he is. Attendees are invited to explain how they got so fucking old. Presumably a marsupial-heavy diet.

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Today -100: December 24, 1922: Of amnesties, bunnies, and bootleggers

Italy amnesties everyone convicted of political crimes through the time the Fascists seized power. I’m assuming it will not be interpreted to include Communists or Socialists. The Ministry of (ahem) Justice says the recent “manifestations” were not really hostile to the state but had the same aims as the state.

Those bodies recovered from Lake La Fourche, Louisiana show signs of flogging and broken bones. One T.J. Burnett, a former deputy sheriff (no explanation as yet as to why he’s former), is arrested for murder by the feds. The local KKK is denying any involvement and offering to assist law enforcement. All the violence started when Dr. Bunnie McKoin, the mayor of Mer Rouge and local Klan leader, a cyclops I believe, in a very Klan-ridden town, claimed that an attempt had been made to kill him. He says he was called out at night to a bogus house call and his car was shot up; the feds think he shot it up himself because evidence. So after this incident that may or may not have occurred last August, the Klan kidnapped and tortured people to get them to give up McKoin’s assailants, including the two found in the lake. After that, McKoin disappeared, claiming he was going to John Hopkins, which says they’ve never heard of him (actually he’ll be arrested there later this week).

Headline of the Day -100:  

Giant negro.

Sen. Charles Curtis, chairman of the Rules Committee, orders the police to arrest all bootleggers entering the Senate office building. There have been rumors about bootleggers operating in the congressional office buildings.

Having dropped its plans to serialize Lloyd George’s memoirs (if he ever gets around to writing them), the NYT chooses an obvious successor, Will Rogers, to write a weekly Sunday column.

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Today -100: December 23, 1922: We are not in the habit of giving Christmas presents

Howard Carter is doing escorted tours of King Tutanhkamen’s tomb, but the Egyptian government plans to seize the contents, with Carter and Lord Carnarvon not getting any of the loot.

At the Lausanne Conference, a French rep on the minorities sub-committee suggests to the Turkish rep, “At this Christmas time it would be most becoming for Turkey to give the Christian minorities the good results which would come from a less stern attitude on their part.” To which the Turk replied, “We are not in the habit of giving Christmas presents.”

The ACLU objects to NYC Mayor John Hylan’s request to Pres. Harding to suppress the Texas Klan newspaper Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly (by banning it from the mails).

A large and mysterious dynamite blast in Lake La Fourche, Louisiana, brings to the surface the bodies of 2 men seized by a bunch of kluxers on August 24 in Mer Rouge. White men, one might add. Presumably the dynamiters intended to destroy the bodies before the feds dredged the lake. Investigators sent by the state to Mer Rouge are being guarded by National Guards with machine guns.

Eleanor Boardman, an unknown actor in 1922 who will co-star in The Crowd (and marry King Vidor), is bitten by a camel on the set of... I dunno, none of the movies she made at this time sound especially camel-centric... and will probably lose her arm (pretty sure I’d have noticed if she was missing an arm in her later films).

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Today -100: December 22, 1922: Sometimes it is expedient that one man should be sacrificed for his group

The Blackshirts of Alessandria, northern Italy, decide to eliminate drunkenness by forcing any inebriated person they find to consume castor oil, and warning them that a second offense will meet with a cudgeling.

Politicians, club women, and Karens generally strongly disapprove any possible revival of Fatty Arbuckle’s career. The NYT, which thinks Fatty was “only the victim of a mischance,” nevertheless says Hays made a bad decision: “Sometimes it is expedient that one man should be sacrificed for his group.”

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Today -100: December 21, 1922: Of “militias,” peacemakers, and fatties

Mussolini will set up a volunteer militia operating alongside the regular army, under his personal control and recruited from the Blackshirts.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Former interior minister Stanisław Wojciechowski is voted the new president of Poland. A former exile who was deported from Poland by the Russians, he worked for independence (I’m assuming that’s the case for every current Polish politician).

Chief Film Censor Will Hays says it’s ok for Fatty Arbuckle to work in the film industry again because he’s promised Hays he will keep on going straight. The mayor of Indianapolis disagrees and will prevent any Fatty films appearing.

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Today -100: December 20, 1922: Of railroad-wreckers, duels, the spirit of Klan-kraft, and straitses

Former British Prime Minister Earl Balfour gives a lecture at Glasgow U. on telepathy.

Ireland executes 7 people for wrecking railroads in County Kildare. The IRA have been burning the houses of their enemies; the 7-year-old son of Deputy Sean McGarry dies of burns.

Belgium’s Minister of Colonies Louis Franck challenges former foreign minister Paul Hymans to a duel.

The Allied Patriotic Societies tries to get the NY Board of Alderman to ban anyone speaking foreign languages on public streets and squares. It dies in committee. 

Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans says the Klan will never unmask. Disdainful of Kansas Gov. Henry Allen, who he ran into yesterday in a Washington hotel, he says “The spirit of Klan-Kraft has enwrapped the United States in a mantle of love for country which designing and ambitious politicians cannot break, and in a few brief years the influence of the Klan will have so engulfed the thought of the country that we can expect intelligent legislation from the Congress of the United States which will drag down the white flag of inertia” etc etc.

At the Lausanne Conference, Lord Curzon tells Turkey it can accept the Allied position on the Straits or go fuck itself, and there is discussion of an Allied demand that Christian nations be allowed to remove Christian women from harems in Turkey if they don’t want to be in harems. Turkey says homes are sacred and anyway there are no women in harems who don’t wish to be there.

There’s a rumor in Germany that Henry Ford is financing Adolf Hitler’s movement. He’s certainly spending a suspiciously large amount of money. And Hitler has a picture of Ford on the wall next to his desk. (No, Ford did not subsidize Hitler).

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Today -100: December 19, 1922: That damned elusive pimpernel

Éamon de Valera attended morning mass in Dublin, presumably this past Sunday. A couple of ratfinks recognized him and went to the military, but he was gone by the time they arrived.

The idea of creating a Central American Union is officially over.

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Today -100: December 18, 1922: Why thank you, we won’t let the door hit us in the ass, thank you for what I’m sure is a quaint Irish expression of cordiality!

All the remaining British troops leave southern Ireland. Col. Commandant Tanner views the joyous Dublin crowds waving as his soldiers depart as a sign of great “cordiality toward us,” which seems like a misinterpretation, but a very British one.

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Today -100: December 17, 1922: Yeah, but is it art?

Polish President Gabriel Narutowicz is assassinated, 5 days after assuming office, by artist Eligiusz Niewiadomski at an art gallery. Niewiadomski is a nationalist with a reputation for looniness since a 1918 car accident which required trepanning. Narutowicz was chatting with the British ambassador, who congratulated him on being elected president. “Condolences, you should say,” Narutowicz responded aaaaaand then he was shot 3 times in the back.

Poland has never had a president, king, prince, anything, assassinated before; they were quite proud/smug about that. But how many assassinations have happened in art galleries? Google tells me the Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated in one in 2016. There were photos. There were memes (no link because Jesus, people). I don’t remember this at all.

Speaker of the House of Deputies Maciej Rataj, now acting president until the House elects a new president, asks Gen. Władysław Sikorski to serve as prime minister.

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Today -100: December 16, 1922: Pembroke is another matter entirely

Headline of the Day -100:  

The NYT admits this story may not be true but puts it on the front page anyway. The Borneo chieftain supposedly tells the missionaries, “Of course no Balliol man could think of eating a fellow Balliol man.”

At the Lausanne Conference, Britain and Turkey are arguing over who gets Mosul and the region’s oil. Turkey thinks the area should be part of Turkey, Britain says Irak is part of their Mesopotamia League of Nations mandate. Turkey also says no to an Armenian homeland and that “Kurds” are not a separate race.

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Today -100: December 15, 1922: I was defeated by the Ku Klux Klan of Oklahoma

Headline of the Day -100:  

They aim to wipe out all holidays of “decadent religions.” And no angel decorations: “Angels are symbols used to enslave the child’s mind.” But there will still be celebrations: Moscow children will be treated, if that is the word, to satirical plays on such subjects as the Lausanne Conference and the Kerensky regime.

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey responds to British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon’s imperious threat to break up the conference if Turkey doesn’t provide guarantees to its Christian minorities. Turkey says it will join the League of Nations so that the League (rather than the special commission of Allied nations Curzon is demanding) would oversee the treatment of minorities as it does for Central European countries, to which the Jewish populations of Romania, Austria etc are doubtless saying, “Er, yeah, about that...”

Rep. Alice Robertson (R-OK) blames her re-election defeat on the Klan, accusing the winner, William Hastings of being a klansman.

Two Communist members of the French National Assembly, Marcel Cachin (editor of L’Humanité) and Paul Vaillant-Coururier, are sentenced to 6 months for articles inciting mutiny in French troops, presumably related to the possible occupation of the Ruhr. Not that it matters because they have parliamentary immunity.

Two black accused horse thieves are kidnapped from jail in Pilot Point, Texas and... we don’t know. The same thing happened a few months ago and those black men were never seen again, an incident that didn’t lead to the authorities actually guarding the jail at night. A note left at the local newspaper says, “Both negroes got what they had coming. Let this be a warning to all negro loafers. Negroes get a job or leave town.”

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Today -100: December 14, 1922: Of duels, state presidents, bodyguards, and rights of correction

Uruguayan President Baltasar Brum challenges political opponent Luis Alberto Herrera to a duel, which is legal if the duel is first approved by a tribunal of honor. They fight in front of hundreds of government officials, firing two shots each. No one is hit.

Bavaria’s reactionary monarchists are trying to create an office of state president of Bavaria, which would sooner or later be occupied by Crown Prince Ruprecht. They’re encouraging Hitler to stir up the Bavarian youth, á la Mussolini, “but the reactionary chiefs do not take him seriously.”

Hitler now has a “bodyguard” of 10,000 uniformed men, and has been visiting states beyond Bavaria, although Württemberg police did stop a planned meeting in Goeppingen.

A judge in Paris rules that a husband has the legal right to hit his wife, the “right of correction.”

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Today -100: December 13, 1922: Sigh

Following the riots attending Gabriel Narutowicz’s swearing-in as president of Poland, the interior minister and the Warsaw chief of police resign, and the latter will be prosecuted. There’s a general strike in protest of the right-wing violence and the power is off in Warsaw. The Nationalists are organizing an economic boycott of Jews.

The rector of the University of Vienna bars Jews from professorships.

Labor Secretary James Davis talks about the need to “educate” foreign-born people, both aliens and naturalized citizens, to “eradicat[e] the false doctrines of radicalism”. He proposes requiring every alien to enroll in government-run “training” on the glories of American democracy, with the added benefit that enrolment would bring to government notice those who “actively resist organized government or are disposed to treat lightly the institutions of law and order.” And of course these people, with all their resisting and treating lightly, would all be deported.

“Elections” are held in Italian cities where Blackshirts forced left-wing council members to resign. You can guess who wins.

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Today -100: December 12, 1922: Of inaugurations, occupations, seductions, scolds, lynchings, and double jeopardies

Gabriel Narutowicz is sworn in as Poland’s new (and indeed the republic’s first) president. The inauguration is marked by right-wing riots (they think Narutowicz is too supportive of the Jews) in which 4 people are killed, as was the custom. Still, I’m sure this won’t mar a long and successful presidency.

British PM Bonar Law tells France that if it occupies the Ruhr, it will do so alone.

A Jewish deputation complains to King Ferdinand of Romania about students (high school? college? I don’t know what “higher schools” means) attacking Jews and Jewish shops in the major cities.

Mississippi Governor Lee M. Russell prevails in the lawsuit brought against him by Frances Birkhead for seduction and impairment of health (he forced her to get an abortion, leaving her sterile). The jury is all male and all married.

A Trenton, New Jersey jury (including 4 women) finds Mrs Marie Sarmosky guilty of being a common scold (that’s the worst kind of scold). She uses bad language and throws water at people, which just sounds like Trenton to me.

George Gay, a black man, is lynched in Streetman, Texas. He’d been arrested for an attack on a white woman, who was unable to identify him as the attacker.

The Supreme Court rules that people can be prosecuted for the same offense under both federal and state Prohibition laws without violating the 5th Amendment ban on double jeopardy.

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