Today -100: October 17, 1924: The woman idea is here to stay

“Ma” Ferguson, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, says of the nomination of Nellie Taylor Ross for governor of Wyoming in the special election there, “The woman idea is here to stay.”

Matilde Pérez Molla becomes Spain’s first woman mayor, of Cuatretondeta. She is appointed, not elected. The first elected mayor, in 1932, will be María Domínguez Remón in Gallur, who will be killed by Francoists early in the Civil War. They weren’t big on the woman idea.

The ZR-3 zeppelin is supposed to be deflated and the hydrogen with which it crossed the Atlantic replaced with helium, which is a lot safer, but the US doesn’t have enough helium to inflate both the ZR-3 and the Shenandoah, so they may not do that.

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Today -100: October 16, 1924: There is no good in shutting your eyes to the portent of the Third Party movement

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes continues to campaign for Coolidge (and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) by focusing solely on Progressive candidate La Follette while ignoring Democratic candidate Davis. “The Third Party is a dangerous enemy to our form of government,” he says. He says Fightin’ Bob’s plan to give Congress a veto over Supreme Court decisions could lead to “any sort of dictatorship they please.”

Indiana Secretary of State Edward Jackson (R), who is running for governor, has been circulating photographs of Ku Klux Klan records to prove he is a member. As are almost all Republicans running for office in the state. Unclear why Jackson thought people needed reassurance on his klannishness.

The ZR-3 zeppelin completes its 5,000-mile trip from the factory in Germany that built it as part of war reparations to the US in 81 hours, circling New York City 5 times just above the skyscrapers and sailing high over Brooklyn (don’t we all) before landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In Toronto, Prince Edward falls off his horse, as was the custom.

The Wahabis capture Mecca. No “excesses” have been reported.

Headline of the Day -100:  

New York Giants pitcher Walter Huntzinger, not a large vomiting man, although I suppose he could be both.

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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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