Today -100: October 15, 1924: Of salient personages and widows

Sen. Frank B. Brandegee (R-Connecticut), 60, commits suicide by gas inhalation. He was ill and had made some bad real estate speculations. He leaves a note for the servants, along with $200 to divide among 3 of them, warning “beware of the gas.” The NYT says Brandegee “was no mediocrity, but a salient personage.” “‘Reactionaries’ have their value. Especially are they needed now when ‘progressives’ is the only word.”

At an emergency state convention Wyoming Democrats nominate the late governor William Ross’s widow Nellie to replace him.

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Today -100: October 14, 1924: Of cunning plans

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes utters the conspiracy theory that Robert La Follette’s third-party presidential run is actually a plot to make his running mate Charles Bryan president.

The British Tory and Liberal parties come to non-compete agreements in some constituencies to prevent splitting the anti-Labour vote. Tories, for example, will not contest Liberal former PM Asquith’s Paisley (Scotland) seat or Ramsay MacDonald’s Aberavon (Wales) seat, to protect the former and threaten the latter.

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Today -100: October 13, 1924: Of Frances and navigators

Anatole France (born François-Anatole Thibault), Nobel-prize-winning French author, dies at 80.

Buster Keaton’s The Navigator premieres.

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Today -100: October 12, 1924: Coolidge, Then Chaos

Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis says the Coolidge slogan “Coolidge or Chaos” should be “Coolidge, Then Chaos.” In an Indianapolis speech, he talks a lot about Republican corruption and calls the R. record “a vast and unwholesome desert...” - that’s the worst kind of desert – “broken at great intervals by a few oases that Democratic votes were able to create”.

Pres. Coolidge addresses employees of the H. J. Heinz Company, the ketchup people, by radio. He says the public now wants business consolidation where it previously wanted monopolies broken up, because business now realizes that it owes service to the public. Oh, Republicans, aren’t they just adorable?

Coolidge’s secretary, C. Bascom Slemp, a name that will never stop being funny, recently said that Coolidge has “repeatedly” declared that he is not a member of, or in sympathy with, the Klan. One James Deery writes Slemp to ask just when it was that Cal said that. Deery replies refusing to give details but says “His attitude... has long been known to those who are in touch with him”. Slemp himself, by the way, was rumored to be a kluxer and, as congresscritter, led the effort to purge the Virginia Republican Party of black members.

Feminist birth-control activist Dora Russell is standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament for Chelsea, a constituency her husband Bertrand Russell twice failed to win.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 11, 1924: Of blimps blowing up. What more do you need?

Winston Churchill is a Tory now. He is standing for Parliament for Epping (Essex).

Labour has recruited independent MP Oswald Mosley, the future British Union of Fascists leader, to run against Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham. Other Labour candidates include Malcolm MacDonald, son of the prime minister, and Oliver Baldwin, son of the Tory party leader. They will all (Spoiler Alert) lose, but they’ll all get into Parliament later in the decade.

Army blimp TC-2 is destroyed over Newport News, Virginia when one of its bombs explodes, killing 2.

Dr. Henry Fox, a biology professor at Mercer University, a Baptist institution, is asked to resign after it is found that he has been teaching evolution. He will refuse to resign and be fired and replaced with a high school teacher. The university will claim Fox was fired for theological differences rather than his teaching, but c’mon.

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Today -100: October 10, 1924: Of amps, dissolutions, and slush

Members of the United States World War Amps, a delightfully named organization of veteran amputees, and other disabled vets, accuse the Veterans’ Bureau of having been infiltrated by the Klan and discriminating on racial and religious grounds. One thing: were amputees really compensated by the inch?

The dissolution of Parliament is held off until a bill for the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland passes through the Lords, then it’s done and elections set for October 29th. The Tories and the Liberals are expected to make relations with Russia their primary attack issue on Labour. Liberals are rightly worried about their party’s survival.

Progressive presidential candidate Robert La Follette accuses the Republicans of raising a $4 or 5 million slush fund. He believes that the money is coming from the Mellons, J.P. Morgan, etc.

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Today -100: October 9, 1924: Cold and unaffected

So that’s it for Britain’s first Labour government. Parliament votes for the Liberal proposal for an inquiry into the withdrawal of incitement to mutiny charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly. The Labour government had said such a vote would be taken as an issue of confidence and result in the dissolution of Parliament. Every party is blaming every other party for a general election the public doesn’t want, the last one having been less than a year ago and the one before that a bit over a year before.

The pro-Fascist wing of Italy’s Liberal Party is considering breaking away to form a new party which would be ironically called the Constitutional Party. Mussolini’s organ the Popolo d’Italia informs the Libs that “their resolution leaves Mussolini cold and unaffected.”

The home of Powhatan, Ohio Mayor George Boger is bombed. He doesn’t know why.

The Swedish government bans killing eagles. Environmentalists are also working to save the Swedish beaver and European bison (visen). I am happy to report the latter two species – don’t know about the eagles – are doing fine now.

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Today -100: October 8, 1924: Nothing in common with us

The British Labour Party Conference rejects affiliation by the Communist Party of Great Britain and membership of individual Communists. Sez PM Ramsay MacDonald: “Communism as such has nothing in common with us. It is the product of Czarism and the war mentality.” He says the last thing the British people want is another general election but the Liberals are forcing it on them. He’s also not impressed that H.H. Asquith said he’d make the Labour government eat out of his hand.

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon and his brother are intimately involved with the monopolistic Aluminum Company of America  and its efforts to get tariffs on imported aluminum increased. Coolidge hasn’t bothered asking for a copy of the Federal Trade Commission’s report on the company.

The Italian Liberal Party conference ends, without coming to any decision about whether to collaborate with the Fascist government. The party is deeply divided.

Lady Nancy Astor, MP supports a bill to change the marriage laws: “I think it is appalling that a man cannot marry his niece,” she says appalledly.

Ireland names its very first ambassador, Timothy Aloysius Smiddy, who will be Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the US.

On Broadway:

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Today -100: October 7, 1924: Turn your weapons on your oppressors!

The minority Labour government in Britain is facing a Tory censure motion over the withdrawal of charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly, for incitement to mutiny. He called on enlisted military personnel to organize passive resistance against war (“Refuse to shoot down your fellow workers! Refuse to fight for profits! Turn your weapons on your oppressors!”). The Liberals are piling on, proposing a Select Committee to investigate, on which 7 of 10 members would be from the opposition parties. PM Ramsay MacDonald threatens that if either measure passes, there will be new elections. Don’t threaten us with a good time, say Tories & Libs. The opposition parties also object to the proposed treaty with Russia.

Coolidge says “ridding society of the very institution of war... is going to be done because men and women demand it. We are making more progress in this direction than we yet fully realize.”

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