Today -100: June 4, 1924: Or running mates, dudes, politburos, and passages

Coolidge will leave the choice of his running mate to the R. Convention. The top choices seem to be Sen. William Borah and Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover, both of whom say they don’t want the job.

Fightin’ Bob La Follette is preparing his 3rd-party run, which would commence after the Republican Convention fails to pick him (the same sort of walk-out Theodore Roosevelt followers staged in 1912). There is some talk that at 68 he’s just too old. He’ll be picking his own running mate. He may pick Sen. Burton Wheeler, a Democrat, but Wheeler doesn’t want the job either.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says Al Smith’s New York delegates to the Dem. Convention won’t push for modification of the Volstead Act.

Leopold n’ Loeb are not speaking to each other in the county jail, even during exercise period, which Loeb spent teaching a negro prisoner how to read. One prisoner complains that Leopold thinks he’s too good for us. Loeb, though, is considered a “good fellow.” They’re both ignoring their cellmates, who in turn look down on them as “dudes.”

Germany: Helmut Marx’s old cabinet will be his new cabinet, negotiations to bring in the Nationalists having failed after the over-reached with their demands. This despite the head of the army, Gen. Hans von Seeckt, saying that he couldn’t be held responsible for the safety of the government without the inclusion of the Nats. Marx won’t seek a new vote of confidence, but will be relying on the tacit support of the Socialists in the Reichstag.

The Lenin-era Politburo is re-elected, including Trotsky.

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India is published.

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