Today -100: May 29, 1926: Of coups, tests of eugenics, and bombs

A military revolt begins in Portugal.

9,000 Slovak fascists meet and swear to fight for Slovak autonomy and the Catholic church. They want only the Slovak language to be used in elementary schools.

The International Woman Suffrage Alliance refuses to allow the National Woman’s Party to join.

The city of Berlin will open a bureau to give couples advice on whether they’re healthy enough to get married and breed. “This is the first real test of the eugenics theory to be tried out in Germany.” But not the last.

Asa Bartlett, head of the Blue Lake Township, Michigan Ku Klux Klan and town constable, is arrested for sending a package bomb to the home of town Supervisor August Krubaech. The bomb killed Krubaech, his 19-year-old daughter, and her fiancé. Bartlett will serve 36 years in prison before his sentence is commuted. He will die in 1982 at 85 years old.

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Today -100: May 28, 1926: Of bodies of representatives of different points of view, coal, pickles, and poles

Two competing American groups, the League of Women Voters and the National Woman’s Party, show up at the big International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) meeting in Paris. The League really really really doesn’t like the more radical NWP and says that the latter “is not a body of representatives of different points of view who meet to develop a common political theory,” which seems an odd argument to make about a group whose, you know, different points of view you’re trying to exclude altogether. Also, Britain, Holland, Romania & France are each already represented by multiple groups. A decision will be made tomorrow.

French suffragists hope this conference will spur the women’s suffrage cause in France. It won’t.

With the coal miners strike still going, Britain imposes rationing. Householders will need a permit to buy coal and then only 100 weight, which is the equivalent of who knows what, per fortnight. Lack of coal is limiting or shutting down factories and railways. Street lights are ordered shut off.

Headline of the Day -100:

3 cans of pickles fell on her in a New Jersey market. And for some reason her husband got $1,000.

Boy, everyone’s looking for Poles today

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Today -100: May 27, 1926: Of princes in prisons and rifs

Hungarian Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz is convicted in the counterfeiting-for-coups case. He and Police Chief Imre Nádosy are sentenced to 4 years and a fine of 10,000 gold crowns, which is the equivalent of some money. Both will be amnestied in 1928. Other participants receive shorter sentences.

The NYT notes that Prince Louis had a lot of fun in “the dives of New York City.”

Abd el-Krim surrenders to the French ending 5 years of war over the Rif in Morocco, first with Spain, then France. He will be exiled to Réunion for 21 years before escaping.

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Today -100: May 26, 1926: I wished to register a moral protest

Symon Petliura, who led the breakaway Ukrainian People’s Republic created in 1917 and fought both the Russian Bolshevik regime and the Whites from 1919 before leaving for exile in Poland and then Paris, is shot in the Latin Quarter by Russian-French Yiddish poet Sholem Schwarzbard, dying later in the day. Schwarzbard explains that he acted in revenge for pogroms by Petliura’s forces which killed thousands of Jews, including some of his family. He will be acquitted next year and live in the US and South Africa, where he’ll die in 1938.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski meets American reporters. Asked why he did the coup, he says “I wished to register a moral protest.” You know, with machine guns.

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Today -100: May 25, 1926: We might as well divide the State into Federal precincts at once

The Supreme Court rules unanimously in the case Corrigan v Buckley, permitting permit racial covenants in D.C. real estate deeds banning the future sale of properties to black people, keeping neighborhoods all-white and making such covenants legally enforceable. In this case, the agreement was made in 1921 among 30 families on a block of S Street NW, but the owners of number 1727 sold their house 

to a black family in 1922, pissing off the neighbors. The Court says private covenants are not prohibited by the 5th, 13th or 14th Amendments and, since they are private, the Court has no jurisdiction. In 1948 Corrigan will be reversed in  Shelley v. Kraemer, which determined (also unanimously) that racially restrictive covenants are prohibited under the 14th Amendment and not enforceable, indeed that enforcement by the state would negate the pretense that racial covenants are purely private.

Governors reply to a NYT question about Coolidge’s executive order allowing the federal government to offer state & local cops dual employment as Prohibition agents. 5 oppose it outright, 4 support it, 7 say there are legal/constitutional issues with their state cooperating, 15 say they’re still thinkin’ about it. Gov. Harry Moore of NJ (D) says “We might as well divide the State into Federal precincts at once”.

Attorney General John Sargent says that the exec. order doesn’t violate the Constitution, federal laws, or state laws. Evidently Coolidge asked for Sargent’s opinion on the legality of the E.O. only after issuing it.

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Today -100: May 24, 1926: Of mysteries, chivalrous coups, and servant shortages

Divers search off the coast of Santa Monica for the body of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, 35, who disappeared last week.

Marshal Piłsudski says the “civil war” in Poland, which is what he calls his coup, was “quite chivalrous”; soldiers often stopped shooting at each other to let children and little old ladies cross the road. But some officers aren’t very forgiving and there will probably be a few duels.

Former suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst (not “Miss Pankhurst,” NYT), continuing her move rightwards, says that if a secret ballot had been taken of miners’ wives, there would never have been a strike.

Oh non! France has a servant shortage. And the Poor Law Dept won’t even let rich Parisians take young orphan girls, saying it would no longer be able to exercise supervision over their welfare. But what about the welfare of rich Parisians? WHAT ABOUT THE WELFARE OF RICH PARISIANS??!!

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Today -100: May 23, 1926: Hazard by name...

Dry Tsar Lincoln Andrews says he’ll try out naming state officials as federal Prohibition agents in California, in accordance with that Coolidge executive order, as a test run. Only in California and only in rural counties and only deputy sheriffs. Sounds like the Coolidge Admin. is backing down.

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson suggests that if she wins the Democratic gubernatorial primary in July by 25,000 votes, her opponent, Dan Moody, immediately resign as attorney general, but if he wins by a single vote, she’ll resign as governor.  (Update: he accepts).

Kentucky National Guard troops armed with machine guns guard the county jail in Hazard to prevent the lynching of a 17-year-old black youth who killed a constable.

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Today -100: May 22, 1926: On the other hand, if they use a trumpet *while* writing on a slate, that would be pretty impressive

Coolidge issues an executive order allowing state, county, and municipal officers to get dual authority as federal officers (for “a nominal rate of compensation,” maybe $1 a year) with the power to cross state and county lines to enforce Prohibition laws, including in the states – New York, Maryland and Nevada – which have no prohibition enforcement laws. New York has a law which strips the salaries of state officers taking a federal appointment. This executive order reverses one issued by Grant in 1873 forbidding executive branch employees holding state offices. Much outrage is expressed, including from dry members of both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on constitutional grounds (Grant’s EO was more about keeping the graft down to a dull roar). Sen. William Bruce (D-Maryland) points out that just last week Coolidge was championing states’ rights and saying that “No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction and decline.” Sen. Edwin Broussard (D-Louisiana) says compulsory enforcement in communities opposed to Prohibition is just like the Northern attitude during Reconstruction: “The president is merely invoking the policy of the North against the South with reference to slavery.” Maybe not as compelling an argument as he thinks it is.

Józef Piłsudski now says he’ll graciously permit the National Assembly to elect him president of Poland, although he claims “I don’t care to be elected president unless it is proved beyond a doubt that the great mass of the Polish people are behind me,” because nothing says I’m indifferent to power like leading a fucking coup. Also, the president is not elected by the Polish people but by the National Assembly, and some members of that body would be arrested if they showed up in Warsaw.

I’ve realized that I’m so pissed off at this coup because I’ve always resented that World War II started when Germany invaded a country with an authoritarian, anti-Semitic regime, Poland, rather than an actual democracy like, say, Czechoslovakia.

There’s a civil case running alongside the criminal trial of the Hungarians who forged French francs to fund a far-right/fascist coup. In the civil case, the Bank of France is demanding only one (1) franc... plus all the forging equipment.  Fascist leader Franz Ulain, who is the lawyer for Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz, points out that Napoleon counterfeited pounds and rubles. In the criminal case, the coupsters’ lawyers are hailing them as the greatest national heroes since Kossuth; I’m rather reminded of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch trial.

Al Jolson resigns from the Westchester Biltmore Country Club after it objected to him bringing a Jew to play golf with him.

At the House of Representatives hearings about possibly banning mediums in the District of Columbia, Anna Fletcher, wife of Sen. Duncan Upshaw Fletcher (D-Florida) testifies that she’s been an “investigator” for 25 years, has never met a dishonest medium, and received a message from her dead father written on a slate in his handwriting. Harry Houdini calls her “sincere” but denies such a thing is possible: “Every medium who uses a trumpet or writes on slates is a fraud.”

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Today -100: May 21, 1926: Restful quiets are the best kind of quiets

The British coal strike continues, as both sides reject Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s proposals to end it.

In a speech to the New York City Bar Association, state Supreme Court Justice William Harmon Black calls for the death penalty for perjury in murder cases, like they did in ancient Rome. He also says jurors must be taught that they’re cowards if they acquit murderers because they are squeamish about the methods of the death penalty.

Thomas Edison says Americans don’t even want talking movies. “Americans require a restful quiet in the moving picture theatre.” Hearing the actors speak would just destroy the illusion. (Unlike seeing the actors in black and white?) Annoyingly for this blog, he refuses to answer a question about what the world will be like in 100 years.

The Jewish population of Poland supports Marshal Piłsudski’s coup, thinking they’ll be better off. Good luck with that.

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Today -100: May 20, 1926: Of vetoes and kings

NY Gov. Al Smith vetoes a Republican bill to redistrict State Assembly & Senate seats, giving R’s seats in Democratic Manhattan. He also vetoes a raise for public teachers, I think but am not wholly sure because it would come at the expense of other priorities, and approves a referendum calling for the loosening of Prohibition. He says this is needed because Prohibition’s popularity in the state has never been quantified. The Legislature approved the 18th Amendment in 1919 after refusing to put it to the voters and the issue has since found its way into low-level elections of officials who have nothing to do with Prohibition.

The military backers of Marshal Piłsudski’s coup want to make him King of Poland.

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Today -100: May 19, 1926: Of crooks, criminals and dupes

The House District of Columbia Committee is holding hearings on ... mediums, specifically whether to ban them in the District of Columbia. The result of which is the White House denying – officially denying, mind you – that any seances have been held at the White House since Coolidge became president. These hearings are becoming a combat between mediums, mostly women, and Harry Houdini, who calls them “crooks and criminals.” He also calls Arthur Conan Doyle a “dupe” of the spiritualists.

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Today -100: May 18, 1926: Cramp by name, cramp by nature

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says the General Strike™ didn’t cost the government more than ₤750,000, so there’ll be no need to raise taxes.

The industrial secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen says the strike cost the union ₤1m and the railway companies ₤5.5m, which I’m mostly reporting in order to inform you that the industrial secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen is named Charlie Cramp.

A group is formed in Czechoslovakia to combat fascism. Former Cabinet minister Becyhne demands that Acting Chief of the Army General Staff Radola Gajda either deny being a card-carrying Fascist or resign. (Gadja will shortly be forced out and in a few months will found and head the National Fascist Community).

Headline of the Day -100:

Sigh.

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