Today -100: October 12, 1926: Of mistrials, mob violence, dodging milk, and criminal petit bourgeois opposition

The federal trial of former attorney general Harry Daugherty ends in a mistrial when the jury fails to come to a verdict.

In retaliation for last month’s attempt by Chicago’s North Side Gang to rub out Al Capone, Capone gunmen kill the Gang’s head Hymie Weiss, 28 (aka Earl Weiss, born Henryk Wojciechowski), and gangster Paddy Murray in a machine gun attack outside the North Side Gang hq, Schofield’s Flowers, also wounding 3 others. One of the gunsels – not that the cops have any idea who they are – is called Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt.

NY Gov. Al Smith accuses challenger Ogden Mills of “talking about milk for political purposes.” He calls the Republican platform “the coldest and clammiest document” he’s ever seen.

Mills says Smith really just wants to be president and is only running for re-election because Tammany Hall ordered him to.

The Prussian Diet discusses – with the occasional thrown water tumbler – the settlement with former kaiser Wilhelm. Some are worried about a provision setting aside Bad-Homburg Palace for his use if he ever comes back to Germany. They are reassured that he won’t do that because then he’d have to pay taxes on his income and property like a common commoner.

The Soviet Politburo takes measures to prevent the opposition (Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc) being heard, including sending claques to meetings to disrupt speakers and censoring reports of meetings at which they were able to speak anyway. Pravda accuses “the criminal petit bourgeois opposition” of “aiming at undermining the party discipline and... trying to open up fresh discussion and foist upon the party decisions long ago rejected.”

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Today -100: October 11, 1926: Of baseball, illegal uniforms, and gas

The St. Louis Cards win the World Series over the Yankees. I’m reliably informed that this story is about baseball.

During the game, baseball fans in Emporia, Kansas gather outside the Emporia Gazette offices to watch the scores change on a magnetic score board, which sounds super-exciting. Clergy complain about this Sunday activity, although the Gazette, which started doing this with last Sunday’s game, pointed out that the game began 30 minutes after services.

The German League for the Rights of Man charges former prince Wilhelm (grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm) with wearing the uniform of an army lieutenant during maneuvers (he was made a lt. before the war, when he was 10, probably on merit, right?). Gen. von Seeckt was fired as Army Chief for allowing Willy to do this.

The American Legion opposes the ratification of the Geneva protocol banning the use of poison gas in war. It says gas is humane and effective. The opposition to poison gas, according to John Thomas Taylor, chair of the Legion’s Legislative Committee, comes from pacifists, not practical soldiers.

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Today -100: October 10, 1926: Of prospective wars, lynchings, and weddings

The Daily Express (UK) claims that Mussolini is planning to go to war with Turkey to gain “influence” on the Aegean coast.

A mob in Doyer, Tennessee seizes and lynches a black man, Rip Bell, who supposedly killed a farmer during a fight over a craps game (or “‘crap’ game,” as the NYT puts it, which is not what it was called then or ever).

The world’s first Esperanto-language wedding takes place in London. He’s British and she’s Austrian. There’s a Reuters newsreel of it on YouTube, obviously silent so what’s the point of that?

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Today -100: October 9, 1926: Of lynchings

In Aiken, South Carolina, a lynch mob of 100 to 150 assholes break into the county jail and abduct (almost certainly with the connivance of the sheriff, as opposed to the bullshit version given in this article) 3 negroes, one of them a woman, charged with murdering the kluxer sheriff last year in a shoot-out when he raided their farm looking for illegal liquor. They’d been convicted but the state Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial; yesterday the judge directed a not guilty verdict for... wait for it... Demon Lowman. The verdicts for the other two, Lowman’s sister & cousin, had not yet been delivered when the mob jumped the gun, as it were. Judge Lanham convenes the Grand Jury to do “the most searching inquiry possible” and says the lynchings were a disgrace to civilization and the white race. You can guess how effective the most searching inquiry possible will be.

The NYT says the lynchings were “a wanton act of savagery,” which is the worst kind of acts of savagery. It notes that the prisoners were let loose and then gunned down “in Mexican style” as they ran.

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Today -100: October 8, 1926: Religious war? OK!

George Key, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic State Committee, says Republican activities are “peculiarly calculated to produce a religious war in Oklahoma.” I think that’s about Johnston backing Al Smith for president in ‘28. The D’s candidate for governor, Henry Johnston, is an open member of the Ku Klux Klan; Republican candidate Omer Benedict admits to having been a kluxer in the past. 

The Texas House of Representatives demands that Gov. Miriam Ferguson fulfil her promise to resign if she lost the D. primary, as she did. The State Senate then kills the measure as not coming under the terms of Ferguson’s call for the special session.

At former attorney general Harry Daugherty’s trial, his lawyer explains that when he burnt all his bank records, it was “in some mad, lone moment”. The lawyer blames the whole bribe-taking thing on Dirty Harry’s friend Jess Smith, who conveniently committed suicide 3 years ago.

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Today -100: October 7, 1926: Without they first have the endorsement

Lamartine Griffin Hardman, 71, described as a “banker, cotton mill owner and practising physician,” wins the Democratic run-off primary for Georgia governor, one of many Georgia elections this year where Klan-backed candidates lose  big time.

The Indiana Republican newspaper editors’ organization releases a photostat of a contract signed in February 1925 by John L. Duvall, promising that if he is elected mayor of Indianapolis with Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson’s support (which he was), “I promise not to appoint any person as member of the Board of Public Works without they first have the endorsement of D.C. Stephenson” and to appoint Claude Worley chief of police. Duvall says it’s a forgery. It will be the basis of his corruption conviction a year from now.

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Today -100: October 6, 1926: Of endorsements and royal property

In the New York elections, William Randolph Hearst comes out for Ogden Mills (R) for governor and Robert F. Wagner (D) for senator. Neither of them seem to be especially thrilled by the endorsement.

Prussia settles former kaiser Wilhelm’s claims to get his shit back. The Hohenzollerns will get 20 million marks – which is the equivalent of some money – in cash, 280,000 acres of land, a few castles, etc. Willy rejected a better deal a while back but complete expropriation has been getting more and more popular, so... He still lives in the Netherlands, banned from returning, but the princes have drifted back to Germany. Communists want them expelled.

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Today -100: October 5, 1926: Of milk rings and baneful violators

Republican candidate for NY governor Rep. Ogden Mills attacks Gov. Al Smith for failing to bring down the bootleg milk ring, with its associated milk graft, and warns that a Smith victory would complete Tammany Hall’s control of state government. 

Democratic nominee for the New York US Senate seat Robert Wagner challenges James Wadsworth Jr. to say whether he advises, as Wagner does, a yes vote on the Prohibition reform referendum. Wadsworth would of course prefer to straddle the fence on this one.

Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc complained about Stalin’s crackdown within the Communist Party, including banning opposition members elected to the party conference, which has now been postponed 10 days. The Moscow party committee demands that the Central Committee repress “these bankrupt leaders, these baneful violators of party discipline” (baneful violators of party discipline are the worst kind of violators of party discipline, because of the bane).

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Today -100: October 4, 1926: As such

Headline of the Day -100:

British Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain visited Italy last week, and Italy got super-excited at what they assumed was a sign that it was finally taking its place among the big dogs and that an alliance would be formed with Britain to offset Franco-German cooperation. Chamberlain says there are no such plans. He says Fascism would not suit Britain, but that he admires Mussolini personally. “He is a man of great force of character, great shrewdness, and great charm and simplicity in his personal conduct, and however you may judge his policy he is a great patriot.”

Baron Maurice de Rothschild of the Rich-Fuck Rothschilds, is elected to the French Chamber of Deputies for the Hautes-Alpes Department by a large majority. He was elected before but that election was not validated due to some Rothschild-level bribery. While the Chamber was debating this, he sent every deputy a brace of partridges; they kept the partridges and voted against him. 

Oh noes! “European royalty is facing a crisis”! It seems that more princesses are coming of age than princes to marry them. Some have been resorting to marrying mere nobles instead.

In Constantinople, Turkey shows how post-Islamic it is now by erecting its first statue depicting a human. Kemal Atatürk, naturally.

An image search suggests that most subsequent statues of Atatürk portray him on a horse.

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Today -100: October 3, 1926: Of dragons, pleasant little trifles, and chapels

A group of Indiana Republican editors turns over evidence to the Indiana State Senate on the massive corruption and general shittery in the state government when it was under the control of Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. One person who really wants this information to come out: D.C. Stephenson, now in prison for second-degree murder and pissed that his friends in government didn’t get him out of trouble (and who have made sure he’s had no contact with the outside world whilst in prison).

Noël Coward’s play “This Was a Man” is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because it depicts adultery, so much adultery. Coward says that in future he’ll concentrate his serious plays on Broadway; “I shall from time to time write a pleasant little trifle for London.” “This Was a Man” won’t have a commercial run in Britain until 2014.

Italy’s Cabinet Council approves restoring capital punishment, which was abolished in 1888, for assassination attempts against Mussolini and the royal family.

Yale makes student chapel-attendance optional.

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Today -100: October 2, 1926: Of political hypocrisy & relief

Democratic nominee for US Senate from NY Robert F. Wagner accuses Sen. James Wadsworth Jr. of “political hypocrisy” in changing from a dry to a wet position. Isn’t it surprising how Prohibition has turned into such a major issue in this election cycle, so many years into the great beverage experiment? There are just no other major issues this year.

Florida Gov. John Martin (D) is accused by the American Red Cross, among others, of sabotaging attempts to raise money for hurricane relief by downplaying the damage so as not to scare away tourists or burst the real estate bubble.

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Today -100: October 1, 1926: Of early beatings, expenses, steel trusts, and flying cork

The theme of New York Republicans in the gubernatorial race will be “Beat Smith this year and you will not have to beat him in 1928,” that is, for president. To be fair, Al Smith is certainly using the governor’s office as a stepping-stone to the White House.

Rep. Ernest Willard Gibson (R-Vermont) spent 36¢ on his unopposed re-election primary, but on what? This is infuriatingly undisclosed.

France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg form an iron and steel trust to limit production, fix prices, and exclude US and British steel.

Headline of the Day -100:

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