Today -100: April 5, 1925: Of crown princes and fair bathers

The right-wing German parties unite behind Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg for the 2nd round of the presidential election. He was not in the first round and in fact has not dabbled in politics since the end of the war, but he is thought to be a stronger candidate than Karl Jarres, who won a plurality in the 1st round. Also, some Bavarian monarchists wouldn’t get behind Jarres. Hindenburg is 77.

One source of chaos in the German right has retreated, a bit: Bavaria’s Prince Rupprecht

backs off his claim to the German throne (but will retain his claim to be King of Bavaria until his death in 30 years). He admits that the north wouldn’t put up with a Catholic kaiser. So the monarchists are now united behind former crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm.

Atlantic City Mayor Edward Bader says this summer women won’t be required to wear hosiery on the beach, though their skirts must be at least 11 inches long. He sees his as a concession to “contrary” “fair bathers.”

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Today -100: April 4, 1925: Of sex-klansmen, student rioters, and lily white primaries

NYT Summary of the Day -100: 

D.C. Stephenson, former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan but not an ex-klansman, having formed his own Klan in the mid-western states, which have the largest number of kluxers. Also, “prominent in Republican circles” downplays his power; he has the same relationship to the Republican Indiana government as Elon Musk has to the Republican national government. Anyway, Stephenson has been indicted for the kidnapping and assault & battery (rape) of Madge Oberholtzer last month. More on this anon.

The chief justice of the DC Supreme Court throws out the indictments against former interior secretary Albert Fall and oil barons Sinclair & Doheny for bribery and defrauding the US government, on the grounds that Assistant Attorney Gen. Oliver Pagan (!) was in the room with the special grand jury investigating the Tea Pot Dome leases.

Some of the striking university students in Paris are tried for rioting. Students sentenced to brief prison sentences will be given political-prisoner status.

The NAACP will challenge the 1923 Texas law banning negroes voting in the Democratic primary (I didn’t mention it here, which I suspect means the NYT didn’t cover it). It will sue on behalf of a black doctor, Lawrence Nixon. In 1927 the US Supreme Court will rule that the law violated the 14th Amendment, so Texas will change the law so that parties, rather than the Legislature, could set their own racist rules. The Supreme Court (1935) will have no problem with this, though it will reverse itself in 1944 (when Dr. Nixon will vote in the Democratic primary).

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Today -100: April 3, 1925: Of bank notes, idiots, coalitions, and deaf drivers

French Finance Minister Etienne Clémentel resigns after announcing without authorization that the government will increase the number of bank notes in circulation (which the Cabinet had decided on) (this is about a genuine practical need for more notes, not a Weimar-type inflationary thing). This is more important than it sounds. Probably.

There’s a fistfight in the Italian Parliament, as was the custom. First an ex-Fascist deputy complains about Fascist violence at a local election, then punches a Fascist who yells “Idiot” at him. Then yadda yadda yadda, biff bash boom, resulting in 6 challenges to duels.

The German Social Democrats (SPD), Democrats (DDP), and the Catholic Zentrum party agree to unite as the “Weimar Coalition” behind Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum) in the 2nd round of the presidential election, although the SPD is holding off making it official to ensure the other 2 parties back Otto Braun in tomorrow’s vote for PM of Prussia.

The New Jersey attorney general says deaf people can get driving licenses.

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Today -100: April 2, 1925: Of thurtles and worthingtons

The federal Prohibition Unit and the enforcement units of the Coast Guard and Customs will be consolidated under Ass’t Treasury Secretary Col. Lincoln Clark Andrews.

French university students declare a strike in 18 universities over the suspension of the dean of the Paris Law Faculty, who doesn’t want a strike and says his suspension was kinda justified. Sometimes I think French students just like to strike.

The House of Commons votes 320-156 to reject an amendment offered by a Labour MP with the unfortunate name Ernest Thurtle (Angela Lansbury’s uncle) to abolish capital punishment in the army. Mr. Thurtle points out that the argument that the threat of execution is needed to keep the troops in line under fire is refuted by the exemplary performance during the Great War of soldiers from Australia, whose government blocked capital punishment. Secretary of State for War Sir Laming Worthington-Evans responds... you know, I don’t care what he said, I just wanted to get that name in here.

The House of Assembly of Bermuda, which still has a property-owning qualification for the franchise, rejects an act to establish women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: April 1, 1925: Of bear ribs, Herriot’s Trump moment, states of debauchery, and super-persons

Rumors from Russia, of the sort that the NYT loves to publish with no collaboration, say that Trotsky has been permanently disappeared. The government is putting out a story that he’s escaped the country, but those rumors say this is just a smokescreen. None of this is true.

Curious just which North Dakota Indian tribe adopted Pres. Coolidge under the name “Bear Ribs,” I quickly gave up when my web search turned up actual recipes.

There’s been rioting, actual rioting, in the Latin Quarter of Paris – I assume the slogans were all shouted in Latin – over the Ministry of Education appointing Georges Scelle to a lectureship on international law at the Paris Law Faculty, slightly bypassing seniority. SLIGHTLY BYPASSING SENIORITY! His lectures have been disrupted by the proto-fascist Action Française’s student group, who claim favoritism and of course that the Masons were behind the appointment, leading the Ministry to close the faculty and suspend the dean for failing to keep order. In the National Assembly discussion of this, Prime Minister Édouard Herriot loudly comments about a deputy who is shouting and “gesticulating freely,” calling him “epileptic,” without, he claims, realizing it’s a guy who had a head injury during the war. Hilarity ensues.

Sen. Burton Wheeler says the witnesses against him at the grand jury were “herded into a hotel by Government agents who fed them booze and drank with them to a state of debauchery” for 3 weeks, during which the foreman was arrested for drunk driving. I guess that explains the odd pause in the hearings.

The 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference closes with a resolution that “persons whose progeny give promise of being of decided value to the community should be encouraged to bear as large families, properly spaced, as they feasibly can.” Roswell Johnson, the geologist who offers the resolution, says “super-persons” have a moral responsibility to have children. Margaret Sanger criticizes Theodore Roosevelt Jr. for calling birth control advocates hoggish, selfish and bad citizens (I can’t verify Tee Arr Jay Arr’s exact original words).

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Today -100: March 31, 1925: More difficult to manage

Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus will drop all wild animal acts (unless you count elephants, horses and such). They’ll continue to be displayed in the menagerie, but not perform or be walked across the street. Jack Ringling admits that people think the bears and giant cats are trained by cruel methods and name-calling (one of the black jaguars is called Nigger because of course it is), and that parents are afraid their children will see animal trainers eaten or whatever. Mabel Stark has transferred from performing with the 14 Bengal tigers to the equestrian side of things: “‘I find the horses more difficult to manage than the tigers,’ said Miss Stark, a trifle wistfully for one who has been clawed as often as she”.

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Today -100: March 30, 1925: Heh heh, 4 votes

Karl Jarres of the nationalist Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) wins more than 10 million votes in the German presidential election (38%), but not a majority, so there will be a run-off in 4 weeks. Otto Braun (Social Democrat) comes in second with 7.8 million. Erich Ludendorff gets a little over 1%, so all that fuss about him being a spoiler was a waste of everyone’s time. In Coburg, and only there, ex-kaiser Wilhelm was on the ballot. He gets 4 votes. This is the first ever presidential election in Germany, by the way.

The Japanese Diet passes the suffrage bill, extending the franchise to about 14 million from 3 million, but only for men over 30 who are not dependent on charity.

Labour MPs in Britain oppose Vincent Lopez’s band being allowed into the country to perform when there are perfectly good British jazz musicians without jobs.

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Today -100: March 29, 1925: Of socialism, inferior babies, and words

The Socialist Party intends to contest the next NYC elections on a platform of 5¢ transit fare.

The international birth control conference being held in NYC is going seriously off the rails. Neuropathologist Max Schlapp says women who “go about getting themselves excited and overwrought in an emotional way” are producing inferior babies. Clarence Little, president of the University of Maine, compares the different races to soda flavors – strawberry, pineapple, chocolate, etc – and says mixing them together is just icky. Eugenic laws should guide races to blend desired racial characteristics (Little will spend the 1950s and ‘60s shilling for the tobacco industry, denying that smoking causes cancer or any other disease). The delegates pass a resolution calling on eugenic societies to recognize birth control as an essential part of eugenics.

The Oxford English Dictionary is adding phrases from the Great War, such as “strafe,” “dud,” “getting the wind up.” Strafe is defined here as “to punish,” used by British and American military prisoners for short sentences for disobedience. It derives from the German catchphrase “Gott strafe England,” meaning “May God punish England.” The later usage for planes machine-gunning ground positions is a World War II one.

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Today -100: March 28, 1925: Of ear fatigue and grade crossings

Sen. Burton Wheeler is indicted in D.C. on the charge, trumped up in retaliation for his work investigating Teapot Dome, of conspiring to use dummies to get prospecting permits on federal oil & gas lands in Montana beyond the number that individuals are allowed. A Senate committee already exonerated Wheeler on this; the grand jury only had the evidence the committee saw. It’s all a bit weird. The grand jury stopped sitting for 4 weeks, so Wheeler assumed the thing had been abandoned.

Psychologists at Princeton determine that radio produces “ear fatigue.”

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith wins his 25% tax cut, but the Legislature refuses to increase the length of the gubernatorial term to 4 years from 2, restore direct primaries, restrict factory employment for women to 48 hours, or hold a referendum on the federal child labor constitutional amendment. There will be a referendum in November for a bond issue to eliminate grade crossings.

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann makes clear that while Germany’s proposed security treaty with France, Britain and Belgium would confirm Germany’s western borders, it would not apply to its eastern borders, because fuck Poland anyway.

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