Today -100: April 28, 1926: Of gangland killings, begging taxes, spas, and lepers

“Chicago gangsters” shoot up a car in Cicero with machine guns, killing Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. McSwiggin, a “hanging prosecutor” (7 executions in a 10-month period!) had unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Al Capone in the past, and Capone is one of the gunmen (well, he was there, he may or may not have personally wielded a Tommy gun), but McSwiggin wasn’t the target here. In fact, they didn’t know he was in the car; he was just heading to play cards with a couple of members of the O’Donnell Gang, one of whom, William “Klondike” O’Donnell, owned the car they were driving through Capone territory, when the Capone-ettes spotted it.

Capone’s involvement is not yet known.

The House of Representatives votes 196-4 to put Prohibition enforcement under the Treasury Dept.

German prohibitionists are pushing local option. The US is worried that local booze bans would reduce Germany’s national revenue, endangering its ability to pay reparations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is proposing to tax betting 5%, and his fellow Tories are not happy. It will end racing as we know it! It will force punters into back-alley wagers! It will legitimize betting! Will no one think of the farmers who grow the oats the race horses eat! 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who has “been in Georgia for his health,” buys the Warm Springs, Georgia spa he thinks is helping his polio.

The racial violence in Carteret, NJ has led to some arrests: not the angry white dudes, of course, but some news photographers who tried to get some local men & boys to brandish sticks and clubs for the camera. In Red Bank, 20-some miles away from Carteret, arson destroys a public school attended only by black students.

Ford Motor Comp. made a profit of only $29 on each car produced in 1925, down from $40 in 1924. Production difficulties are claimed to be the problem, and certainly not the declining popularity of the Model T.

The NY City Health Commissioner Louis Harris warns hospitals and dermatologists to be on the lookout for Antonia Ramoa, a woman with leprosy who escaped as she was being forcibly removed to the leper colony at Carville, Louisiana.

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Today -100: April 27, 1926: Sex!

A white mob burns a black Baptist church in Carteret, NJ and forces 100 black families out of the town after a couple of white guys are stabbed, one fatally, during a fight.

Mae West’s Sex opens, er, so to speak. It’s her first starring role. She also wrote and is directing it. The NYT calls it “A crude, inept play, cheaply produced and poorly acted”. So it will run for 375 performances.

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Today -100: April 26, 1926: He was against abuse of power before he was for abuse of power

Paris police investigate the story in a magazine that a ballerina, unnamed but obvious, bathes in 300 quarts of milk every day, which her valet then sells back to milk traders. They conclude that the story is made up.

Headline of the Day -100:

Zip the Pinhead, chief freak at Barnum & Bailey’s & Ringling Brothers Circus, has died at... 83? 69? Also known as “Zip - What Is It?”, a name supposedly bestowed upon him by Charles Dickens.

Sidney Barrett of Mahopac, NY and Hazel Williams marry despite a Ku Klux Klan warning to them not to (she may or may not have some negro blood). They’re supposed to be living with his uncle, but he got a gentle request from the Klan to allow the couple to live in his spare rooms but to admit any kluxers who happen to drop by.

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Today -100: April 25, 1926: Then make the most of it

Texas governor “Ma” Ferguson issues her re-election platform, including a defense of “the administration of the Fergusons.” Taxes are down and there hasn’t been a single lynching under her administration. She calls for a tax of 1¢ a cigar. “If Feargusonism is treason, then make the most of it” is her rather odd motto.

Poland: the government of Aleksander Skrzyński resigned last week after its finance minister resigned. He will try to form a new cabinet, this time with... wait for it... a Jew. An actual Jew. The way the article is written, it’s hard to tell if he’s got a specific Jew in mind or just figures that Jews are good at that finance stuff.

Princess Mary of Britain denies – vehemently – that she has bobbed her hair, after an unfortunate portrait made it look like she had.

German judges will no longer be allowed to snooze at the bench. For a century the criminal code has held that a judge’s physical presence, awake or otherwise, is sufficient to ensure a fair trial. However, the new rule only considers it sleep if it’s, like, really deep; light dozing and snoring are still acceptable.

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Today -100: April 24, 1926: Practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition

The Illinois State Democratic Convention calls for modification of the Volstead Act to allow states to permit light wines and beer. “We favor practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition.” The Republicans also meet, but fail to take any position on booze.

Germany & Russia agree a neutrality treaty.

Austria will change its army uniforms from green to grey, like the German uniform. They’re hoping for Anschluß by incremental stealth, hoping no one notices, or something.

Italy’s Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni creates a committee to combat birth control information or, as he terms it, “insidious, practical, pseudo-scientific neo-malthusian propaganda.” Italy’s greatest riches, Federzoni says, “is in the multiplication of its children, which is the strongest investment for invincible world expansion.”

The furniture of former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 84, is seized because he refused to pay the fine for delaying paying his taxes. He buys back the furniture before it’s carted away.

New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore does indeed refuse to meet the textile strikers’ rep Albert Weisbord and cancels an arbitration meeting, insisting that Weisbord should have had the “tact” not to show up.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot will premiere tomorrow at La Scala. Puccini died in 1924. Arturo Toscanini, who also premiered La bohème, will conduct.

In other opera news, Eduard Künnecke is adapting Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Almost finished, he says. He won’t finish it. I guess the next musical Dickens is Oliver.

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Today -100: April 23, 1926: Of gratification, trying English, and collapsible beds

Failed Headline of the Day -100:

“Ratification Gratification” was sitting right there.

Headline That... They Have To Have Known What They Were Doing, Right? of the Day -100:

That’s not the English language, which is tried but rarely in the US Senate to this day, but judge George Washington English of the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, a Wilson appointee, accused of, and now impeached for, various abuses of power.

The Passaic textile strikers pick Albert Weisbord to represent them, despite Gov. Harry Moore’s attempt to veto him. Will the guv refuse to meet with him?

The London production of Harlan Thompson & Harry Archer musical “Little Jessie James,” a big hit on Broadway a couple of years back, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because there is a bed in one scene. Thompson points out that it is only a collapsible bed, “but the censor declined to regard it as less objectionable for that reason.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1926: Of unmistakable Communists, territorial limits, and princesses & jixes

NJ Gov. Harry Moore intervenes in the Passaic region textile strike by talking with mill owners and some random strikers but he refuses to speak with the actual strike leaders because they’re “unmistakably Communists.” Albert Weisbord, a strike leader who is totally a Communist, calls Moore, who is totally a bad egg, “a bad egg.”

A Circuit Court rules that the US has no jurisdiction to seize foreign rum ships beyond the 3-mile limit, treaties or no treaties.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) was present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth, presumably not actually in the birthing chamber, or whatever they call it, following the ancient custom that a government official attend a royal birth to ensure there’s no hanky-panky with the line of succession.

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Today -100: April 21, 1926: Of princesses and child marriages

Disney Princess Elizabeth of York is born. Although she’s third in line to the throne, she isn’t expected to ascend to the throne unless... well, just unless.

The NY Legislature passes a ban on marriages of children under the age of 14. A provision to also ban marriages between 14 and 16 without judicial approval disappeared mysteriously along the way. By the by, there is only one woman member of the Assembly, Rhoda Fox Graves. There are no women in the NY Senate; the first, Graves, will be elected in 1934.

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Today -100: April 20, 1926: Of courts and fasts

Secretary of State Kellogg rejects US participation in a conference of World Court members to discuss US reservations.

Two German hunger artists beat Jolly’s fasting record, quitting at 46 days. One of them is named Max Fastello, supposedly.

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Today -100: April 19, 1926: We cannot afford revelries

Turkey calls military recruits to the colors, worried about Mussolini’s speech in Tripoli and a suspected deal between Greece & Italy for each to grab chunks of Turkey, with Italy in the meantime building up Greece’s military.

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos is installed as president of Greece and will give up all the dictatorial powers he seized in January (suuuure he will).  He will free all the political prisoners & journalists he had arrested.

Headline of the Day -100:

“We cannot afford revelries,” Michael Stalin says (the NYT thinks that’s his first name. I say Russian history would have been very different if everyone had called him Mike).

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Today -100: April 18, 1926: Of poles, desire, and lightning

Roald Amundsen’s Arctic expedition, using an Italian airship, will drop Fascist flags and whatnot on the Pole.

The  Desire Under the Elms trial in L.A. ends in a mistrial.

The radio section of the Sunday NYT explains how not to get electrocuted through your antenna in a thunderstorm.

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Today -100: April 17, 1926: Air piracy is the geekiest kind of piracy

District Court Judge James Wilkerson rules that Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover has no legal power to regulate radio broadcasting and acquits Zenith Radio Corp’s Chicago station, WJAZ, which changed its frequency without authorization to one assigned to Canadian stations in an act of “air piracy.”

Federal Prohibition Cracker-Downer Gen. Lincoln Andrews says he can stop all bootlegging if he’s given $3,000,000 and left alone. The money could come from taxing bootleggers.

The Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms concludes. Their actors’ lawyer quotes the Bible and Shakespeare to show that they had dirty words too. The prosecutor claims that the performance given to the jury was “a parlor version,” with the actors slurring the naughtier lines.

The Royal Geographic Society spells the Baltic nation “Estonia,” but the US is sticking with “Esthonia.”

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