Today -100: May 18, 1922: Of hearsts, machines, cement juggling, steel heads, and potato dumping

William Randolph Hearst, after denying that he would run for governor of New York, has been telling people that he’s available to run for governor of New York. Democratic Party/Tammany leaders are not enthused – at all – and are trying to get Al Smith out of trucking and back into politics. NYC Mayor Hylan supports a possible Hearst run.

Gifford Pinchot defeats the powerful Pennsylvania political machine to win the Republican primary for governor.

Whoops, Nikolaos Stratos’s government in Greece loses a vote of confidence.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Headline of the Day -100:  

Worst Pornhub Title Ever:

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Today -100: May 17, 1922: Of conferences, bombings, and Greeks bearing cabinets, or something

The Genoa Conference has agreed to... hold another conference, next month in The Hague, dealing with Russia. The US refuses to attend, as was the custom, and France is threatening to boycott as well.

A partly completed, partly occupied building in Chicago is blown up. Tenants were warned to leave. Evidently a protest against the Landis award, in which Judge Landis allowed the building industries to cut pay.

I missed the fall of the Greek government a week or two ago. The Gounaris government fell due to its poor military record against Turkey. Now there’s a new cabinet, led by Nikolaos Stratos. Good luck with that, Nick!

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Today -100: May 16, 1922: Of duels, child labor, and Rudy’s marriages

Benito Mussolini fights a duel – with swords, no less – with the editor of the Turin Secolo, Mario Missiroli. Mussolini is declared the victor after 7 assaults (or the duel is called when he is injured on the hand, depending on which account you read).

The Supreme Court overturns the 1919 federal law against child labor which put a 10% excise tax on factories employing children under 14 or mines children under 16. The Court says that’s a state issue.

The Superior Court in Los Angeles says Rudolph Valentino’s Mexican marriage with Winifred Hudnut last week is not valid in California because his divorce from Jean Ackers isn’t final yet (or it is final, but he has to wait one year before remarrying, depending on which account you read).

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Today -100: May 15, 1922: Of standards, foot-kissing, and harmony

The building industry forms an American Construction Council to help raise standards, naming former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt as chairman. Unpaid, but I guess it’s his first gig post-polio.

In a Chicago police court, a man charged with wife-beating is ordered to kiss his wife’s foot. Pretty sure the judge didn’t ask the wife’s permission before so ordering. Then he puts the guy on probation.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Because if there’s one thing the French like, it’s foreign tourists.

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Today -100: May 14, 1922: Of decent burials, protectorates, and polo balls

Emile Holley, or possibly Emil Holly, depending on which NYT story you read, the black man appointed for admission to Annapolis by Rep. Martin Ansorge (R-Harlem, NY), fails the mental tests (this probably means IQ tests), which isn’t suspicious at all, although the grading is supposedly anonymous.

I’ve been meaning to praise NYT correspondent Edwin James’s prose in his opinionated reporting from Genoa. Today: “Today was spent arranging the funeral of the Genoa conference. Having seen it fail almost beyond their fondest hopes, the French appear unwilling to see it have a decent burial.” Lloyd George wants an international commission to study reconstruction in Russia as a way to get something out of the conference, but France objects to Russia being included on the commission, although obviously Russia would reject a commission on Russia with no Russians.

The League of Nations Council agrees to establish a protectorate over Albania, since no country is willing to take up the burden.

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Today -100: May 13, 1922: There’s unseemliness, and then there’s golf buddies

Although Harding said he’d stay entirely out of primaries, because endorsing candidates would be “unseemly,” he endorses Sen. Joseph Frelinghuysen (NJ), with whom he often plays golf.

Chicago police raid a bomb factory supplying trade union “sluggers.” They’re getting some prisoners to “confess” because, well, Chicago.

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Today -100: May 12, 1922: In times of war

Russia rejects the conditions the other countries at Genoa are trying to impose on them in return for resumed commercial relations but without the huge loan that Russia’s been demanding. Those conditions amounted to ending socialism, and it’s still not clear to me if they thought Russia’s ending of private property was something it would really just give up. Russia is now withdrawing its previous agreement to pay the tsarist debts and compensate foreigners whose property was nationalized.

Illinois Gov. Len Small’s trial for corruption finally begins. When he was state treasurer, he “deposited” state funds in a bank which did not exist, depriving the state of interest while he actually invested the funds in packing company bonds.

The Chicago grand jury is called into a rush special session to head off habeas writs by indicting 8 leaders of trade unions and others for alleged incitement to the murders of those two cops. This is under the law used to execute anarchists after the Haymarket Riot of 1886 (none of whom had participated in the riot). The prosecutor says he has enough “evidence” to hang several of the arrestees. The lawyer for Cornelius “Con” Shea of the Theatrical Janitors’ Union (I assume they mop floors very dramatically) asks if the right of habeas corpus is to be abridged just because he is Con Shea; the judge says “In times of war – yes” (the judge thinks there’s a war on law n’ order).

The motion picture theatre owners of America ban any possible films starring Peggy Joyce, citing their opposition to “the exploitation on our screens” of all “such objectionable lines of conduct,” presumably referring to the former Ziegfeld girl’s loud and contentious divorce last year and her chaotic romantic life in general (some French guy may have just committed suicide because she threw him over) (by the time she died, she married 6 times, starting at 15 years old).

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Today -100: May 11, 1922: We’ll meet their gunplay with guns

In a Chicago labor dispute among glaziers, bombs explode at open-shop glass plants and two cops, a lieutenant and a patrolman, are shot dead by unionists. The police respond, as was the custom, by raiding every union headquarters in town and arresting over 200 union leaders or “hoodlums who pose around as labor leaders,” as Police Chief Charles Fitzmorris calls them. “We’ll meet their gunplay with guns,” he says, probably doing a Sean Connery impression.

NYC Mayor John Hylan, in his eternal grudge match with Gov. Nathan Miller, rejects the latter’s order that voting machines be used in the city’s elections. There are questions about how the Automatic Registering Machine Corporation got the contract for over-priced voting machines.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Well, it’s certainly worth a try. 

Oh, they mean the mayor of Buffalo, New York, not an actual buffalo. He’s a brewer being tried for, you know, brewing. 

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Today -100: May 10, 1922: Peace, ain’t it grand

Poland and Germany finally come to an agreement over the division of Silesia. It includes free transit through Poland of goods between Germany and Russia.

Attorney General Harry Daugherty says the Wilson Administration actively concealed war-contract fraud cases.

Cuba just ended its role as a combatant in World War I. I don’t think anyone noticed they were still at war.

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