Today -100: November 11, 1924: If I should let them go, the Opposition would go like that

Sheriff Conn of Skagit County, Washington seizes 225 alleged IWW strikers and pushes them over the county line, as was the custom.

Dion O'Banion, 32-year-old head of Chicago’s North Side Gang, “King of the Beer Runners,” is gunned down in his florist shop by 3 gunsels (I don’t think I’ve ever written that word before), as was the custom. The Chicago gang wars have begun.

College Hill, Ohio Mayor A.L. Pugh and dry agent Greenlee Hahn are on trial for an overly aggressive liquor raid on a home in which a woman was hit and guns pointed. The trial is invaded by a mob singing “How Dry I Am” and threatening to lynch them and burn the town hall. I might not have written up this story but it’s an opportunity to note that “How Dry I Am” was written by Irving Berlin.

Mussolini gives one of those interviews to an American newspaper, the Chicago Tribune in this case, that are I guess intended to be reassuring but never are. He says it’s him who is “holding the Fascisti in check. If I should let them go, as they are pleading, the Opposition would go like that.” Also, he may dissolve Parliament in order to push his policies through.

Hickson W. Field (b.1849) is fighting an attempt by his 2 nieces to have him declared incompetent. I might not have written up this story but he’s evidently one of the last 2 people who were in Ford’s Theatre when Lincoln was shot. (Update: Nope, there are 3, which will drop to 2 next month when Alvin Sherman Wheaton dies).

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