Today -100: November 16, 1924: It’s the Chicago way

Chicago Police Chief Morgan Collins will form a “strong-arm squad” 12 cops to battle organized crime (more breaking heads than making arrests, sounds like) and reorganize the detective bureau. “Those detectives who are too lady-like to do business with the gunmen are to be removed,” he says.

Another response to Chicago mob violence: the Sears, Roebuck catalog will no longer sell firearms by mail order.

Organ grinders with monkeys are disappearing from New York streets thanks to the closing of bars and the fact that monkeys are illegal. And you have to have a license to operate a portable organ, not that that ever stops anyone.

The 21 Republican state legislators from Rhode Island are ending their Massachusetts exile and in return Democratic state senators will end their filibuster of the budget. The D’s were trying to alter the ridiculously archaic state constitution, which still has a property qualification for voting and senatorial districts weighted towards rural areas, giving R’s a clear majority of seats despite only garnering 24% of the vote. This stalemate meant there’s been no budget and hence no salaries for officials or money for jails since January, so private citizens and banks stepped up to fund some of that, advancing state employees first 90% of their salaries, then 75%.

Newlyweds Leonard and Alice Rhinelander flee the glare of publicity. Reporters have discovered that Alice’s father was listed as “colored” when he naturalized in the ‘90s, as was her sister Emily on her marriage certificate.

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