Today -100: June 18, 1924: We can beat ‘em anyway

William Gibbs McAdoo says he doesn’t care about the 2/3 presidential nomination rule: “We can beat ‘em anyway.”

Al Smith records a 6-minute “talking movie,” the first use of that technology in a presidential campaign.

Sen. Pat Harrison of Mississippi will give the keynote speech to the Dem. convention. Former Miss. senator LeRoy Percy accuses him of leading “a Ku Klux Klan delegation.” Percy was on one of the anti-Klan delegations that wasn’t seated at the state convention. He doesn’t accuse Harrison of being a kluxer, but says most of the state’s delegates are.

Lawyers boycott courts in Naples & Palermo to protest the probable murder of Giacomo Matteotti. Police disperse various anti-Fascist protests. Supposedly Pope Pius met Matteotti’s widow, for half an hour no less.

The NYT suggests that the Matteotti kidnapping threatens Mussolini’s grip on power and has damaged “the prestige of Fascismo”: “The Government of Mussolini may go down in history with the Government of the Tarquins and of Appius Claudius to testify that a people which will endure loss of liberty may rise on an issue of personal outrage.” The murder “is of a kind that may kill a movement by depriving it at a stroke of its moral content.” You know, that celebrated Fascist moral content.

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