July 6, 1920: The Democrats' Post-Wilson No-Win Situation

July 6, 1920: The Democratic National Convention meets at what's now the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, now the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. This is the 1st major party Convention on the West Coast.

With the 19th Amendment close to ratification, giving women the right to vote, Laura Clay, a suffragette from Kentucky, became the 1st woman to have her name placed in nomination at a major-party Convention, although she only got 1 Delegate.

The Civic Auditorium, now named for Bill Graham

In spite of his physical and political paralysis, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson has only recently come to terms with the fact that he cannot be considered for a 3rd term. There is some debate as to whether he used his son-in-law, also his former Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, as his stand-in or "stalking horse," or tried to stop him. Either way, McAdoo -- like Wilson, a panderer to racists but progressive on most other issues -- led on the 1st 11 ballots.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he of the original Red Scare, the Palmer Raids, was 2nd behind McAdoo, and remained so through 6 ballots, as it took 2/3rds of the Delegates to secure the nomination -- a rule designed to give the conservative South an effective veto on any racial progressive. Governor James M. Cox of Ohio was in 3rd place on those ballots.

Then, pretty much anybody not pledged to McAdoo or Palmer -- at that point, even Democrats had what we would now call "Wilson fatigue" -- united behind Cox. He overtook Palmer on the 7th ballot, and overtook McAdoo on the 12th.

But McAdoo wouldn’t give in: On the 30th ballot, he retook the lead. On the 39th ballot, Palmer's delegates, determined to stop McAdoo, began switching, and Cox retook the lead. Finally, on the 44th ballot, Cox got the 2/3rds majority. The 50-year-old Governor would be nominated against the Republicans' Senator Warren Harding -- also a newspaper publisher from Ohio.

In contrast, picking a Vice Presidential nominee was easy: Cox asked the Convention to accept, by acclamation, the handsome, charming, 39-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a New Yorker who was known to be well-liked by both Wilson and the party at large. They accepted him. It was probably the best thing Cox could have done for himself in the campaign, because the Secretary had, as was said at the time, "a magic name." He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In the end, FDR was unable to help. And the thought of either McAdoo with his racism or Palmer with his paranoia becoming President is pointless: The Democrats had no chance: The American people saw them as the Party of Woodrow Wilson, and thus as the Party of the League of Nations, and thus as the Party of internationalism, and thus as the Party of possibly another war, even if Wilson was "The Prophet of Peace." If they had nominated an opponent of the League, it would have been, well, so what, we might as well vote for a Republican.

After an insane 103 ballots in 1924, the 2/3rds rule was kept. It took only 1 ballot to nominate Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York in 1928. It took 4 ballots to nominate his successor as Governor, FDR, in 1932. The 2/3rds rule was finally done away with in 1936, because, by then, FDR was President and had full control of the Democratic Party. Since then, the Democrats' nomination has only needed a majority. The Republicans' always has.

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July 6, 1920 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Washington Senators, 17-0 at National Park (later Griffith Stadium) in Washington. Carl Mays pitched a 3-hit shutout, and went 2-for-5 with 3 RBIs in his own cause. Every Yankee starter had at least 1 hit. The only home run was hit by Del Pratt, who went 2-for-4 with a walk and 4 RBIs. Babe Ruth went 2-for-5 with a walk and 2 RBIs.

* The Brooklyn Robins (as the Dodgers were known while Wilbert Robinson managed them, 1914-31) beat the Boston Braves, 4-2 at Braves Field in Boston. Zack Wheat went 1-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs.

* There was a doubleheader split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Boston Red Sox won the opener, 11-0. Sad Sam Jones did not live up to his nickname, pitching a 5-hit shutout. Gene Bailey and Everett Scott each got 4 hits, while Scott and Mike Menofsky each had 3 RBIs. The Philadelphia Athletics won the nightcap, 5-1.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 5-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The game went to extra innings, and each team scored a run in the 10th inning. Oscar "Happy" Felsch hit a home run in the bottom of the 11th inning to win it. He was one of the "Eight Men Out" who would be accused of throwing the previous year's World Series. Another, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, went 1-for-5 with a walk. Another, Charles "Swede" Risberg, went 3-for-5 with an RBI. George "Buck" Weaver, not one of them but banned because he knew about the fix and didn't report it, went 3-for-5. Eddie Collins, not one of them, went 2-for-6. Indians player-manager Tris Speaker went 1-for-5.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 12-8 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Turner Barber, the Cubs' 1st baseman, went 5-for-6 with 2 RBIs. Charlie Hollocher, the Cubs' shortstop, went 4-for-5 with a walk and 3 RBIs. Rogers Hornsby went 1-for-5 with an RBI for the Cards.

* The Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Navin Field (later Briggs Stadium and Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on September 23. The Browns swept, 8-4 and 3-0. Bill Bayne pitched a 7-hit shutout in the 2nd game. Over the 2 games, George Sisler went 1-for-6 with 3 walks and an RBI, and Ty Cobb went 2-for-7 with a walk and an RBI.

* And the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies were not scheduled.

June 2, 1919: The Bombing That Led to the Palmer Raids -- and the FBI

Palmer's home after the bombing

June 2, 1919: Terrorists, followers of the Boston-based Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani, detonate 9 bombs, nearly simultaneously, a follow-up to their somewhat successful campaign in April, after spending 1916, 1917 and 1918 detonating several bombs in Boston and environs.

Luigi Galleani

The targets were men who had endorsed anti-sedition laws and the deportation of immigrants accused (but not convicted) of crimes in America. They included Mayor Harry Davis of Cleveland; judges in New York, Boston and Pittsburgh; an immigration chief in Pittsburgh; a Massachusetts State Representative; a Catholic Church in Philadelphia; and, most notably, the nation's chief law enforcement officer, the Attorney General of the United States, Alexander Mitchell Palmer.

Only 2 people were killed as a result of these bombings, 1 of them a bomber who mishandled his device. But the message was clear, stated in handbills left at the bombing sites: "There will have to be bloodshed. We will not dodge. There will have to be murder. We will kill, because it is necessary. There will have to be destruction. We will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions." They were signed, "The Anarchist Fighters."

Palmer was not hurt, nor was anyone in his family, but his home was damaged, and he was spooked. He overreacted. First, he deported Galleani back to Italy. Then, he activated the U.S. Department of Justice's General Intelligence Division to investigate domestic radicals. He put a 24-year-old DOJ clerk in charge of it. His name was John Edgar Hoover.

By November, Palmer and Hoover -- both of whom used only their first initials, so they were listed as "A. Mitchell Palmer" and "J. Edgar Hoover" -- believed they had gathered enough evidence to act. They sent federal agents to round up immigrants tied (correctly or otherwise) to radical causes, and prepared them for deportation. They became known as the Palmer Raids, and were America's 1st "Red Scare." Public opinion was strongly in favor of them, but eventually turned against them, as reports of the prisoners' ill treatment reached the public.

Only 2 men were arrested in connection with the June 2 bombings. And the Raids weren't all that effective. On September 16, 1920, the era's equivalent of a car bomb went off from a horse-drawn carriage on Wall Street, attempting to destroy the House of Morgan and the New York Stock Exchange. A total of 38 people were killed, and, while neither building was destroyed, shrapnel holes and scars can still be seen on the House of Morgan's Wall Street wall today. No one was ever arrested for that crime.

Galleani was twice imprisoned by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, before dying a free man in 1931. Palmer sought the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 1920, but labor groups, always with a veto over the Democratic nominating process, were furious about his Raids, and he never had a chance. He left office with President Woodrow Wilson in 1921, resumed the practice of law, and died in 1936.

Hoover reorganized the GID into the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1924, and he built the FBI into the world's greatest law enforcement agency, but never gave up his excesses until his death in 1972. He was not related to President Herbert Hoover, nor to longtime White House chief usher Irwin "Ike" Hoover.

With some irony, the FBI's headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, is subordinate to the Department of Justice's headquarters, the Robert F. Kennedy Building. The former was built in 1975, 3 years after Hoover's death, and built across the street from the latter, which was built at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in 1935, and renamed for RFK in 2001.

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June 2, 1919 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Athletics, 7-0 and 10-5 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. In the opener, Bob Shawkey pitched a 4-hit shutout. In the nightcap, Ping Bodie went 4-for-4 with 2 home runs and 6 RBIs.

Yes, Ping Bodie was a real guy. He was born Francesco Stephano Pezzolo, but he changed it to Frank Stephen Bodie, after his California hometown. "Ping" was the sound his especially heavy bat made when it hit the era's "dead ball." The following year, the Yankees acquired Babe Ruth, and had him room with Bodie. But Ruth was out partying so much that Bodie said, "I don't room with Babe Ruth. I room with his suitcase."

* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-4 and 9-7 at the Polo Grounds.

* A doubleheader was split at Braves Field in Boston. The Brooklyn Robins (as the Dodgers were known under Wilbert Robinson's managing from 1914 to 1931) won the 1st game, 3-1. The Boston Braves won the 2nd game, 5-1. Zack Wheat went 3-for-8.

* The Washington Senators beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-0 at National Park (later Griffith Stadium) in Washington. Jim Shaw pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching Carl Mays, one of several pitchers the Red Sox would sell to the Yankees over the next few years, so that the 1910s Red Sox dynasty basically became the 1920s Yankee dynasty. Babe Ruth would also be sold to the Yankees, and he went 1-for-3 with a walk in this game.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 6-3 at League Park in Cleveland. Indians player-manager Tris Speaker did not put himself into the game. George Sisler went 1-for-4 for the Browns.

* The Detroit Tigers swept a doubleheader from the Chicago White Sox at Navin Field in Detroit, 5-3 and 2-1. (Navin Field would be renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Over the 2 games, Ty Cobb went 1-for-8, Eddie Collins went 0-for-5 with 3 walks and an RBI on a groundout, and Shoeless Joe Jackson went 2-for-8.

* The Chicago Cubs swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-0 and 2-1 at Cubs Park in Chicago. (It was renamed Wrigley Field in 1926.) Grover Cleveland Alexander allowed 9 hits in the 1st game, but kept the shutout. He had 90 for his career, most among all National League pitchers, and only Walter Johnson with 113 had more in the American League. Dode Paskert singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 12th inning of the 2nd game.

* And the Cincinnati Reds beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at Robison Field in St. Louis.