Today -100: March 13, 1926: Of reasonable concessions, dining alone, fasts, and disarmaments

Germany rejects the compromise proposal that Poland join the League of Nations Council on a non-permanent basis at the same time as Germany joins both the League and the Council, with decisions on Spain and Brazil postponed. French PM Aristide Briand says they’ve reached “the extreme limit of concessions.” British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain says there’s no point in further discussions: “We have made every reasonable concession, and if the Locarno plan fails now the plain fault will be that of Germany” (yes, it’s his brother Neville who made every unreasonable concession to Germany in 1938).

It’s generally agreed that if an agreement is not reached, the future of the League of Nations would be in doubt, and the already shaky governments of France and Germany, and possibly Britain, would fall.

Since Crown Prince Carol renounced the Romanian throne in January, the king and queen are barely speaking and no longer eat together. There is a plan afoot to allow him to return from exile as a private citizen. (The article offhandedly, after the fold, mentions that 1) there is an anti-Semitic student strike in Bucharest, 2) the Horthy regime is using it as an excuse to station troops there just when it’s trying to get the parliament to pass a new voting system modeled on Mussolini’s. Maybe put that shit ahead of the royal gossip).

Following the success of hunger artist “Jolly,” so many people have applied to sit in a glass booth and not eat that the Berlin chief of police bans any new professional fasters (grandfathering in those like Jolly who are currently mid-fast).

The Danish Folketing (Parliament) votes to mostly abolish the army and navy.

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Today -100: March 12, 1926: Like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist

Virginia’s State Senate has its first ever impeachment, that of Sen. Alfred C. Smith, after it’s discovered that he was convicted of forgery in South Carolina in 1913 and of getting his Virginia law licence fraudulently in 1914. During the impeachment debate, Smith accuses Sen. James Barron of doing the work of the Knights of Columbus. The senate removes him from office. In November he’ll be re-elected, unopposed (!) to serve the remainder of his term. He’ll be convicted of fraud, again, in 1938 and go to prison.

Socialist congresscritter Victor Berger lobbies the government to restore Eugene Debs’s civil rights. Attorney Gen. John Sargent tells him Debs would have to apply for a pardon personally. Berger says this Debs refuses to do because he asserts that he did nothing wrong: “This is like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist.”

During a debate in the British Parliament on maintaining a Navy of 102,675 men, George Lansbury (grandfather of Angela) proposes reducing that by, oh, say, 100,000, saying the Navy is used for capitalist exploitation throughout the world. His motion loses 167 to 19.

Mississippi bans the teaching in state-supported schools that man “ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.”

Austrian Fascists are calling for restorations(s) of the Habsbugs (that was a typo, but I like it so I’m keeping it), but with Otto as king of Austria and other Habsbugs as kings of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia. I’m not sure how this would work with their other goal of Anschluß with Germany; presumably Germany would have to restore its own emperor or even all its royal families.

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Today -100: March 11, 1926: Of councils, beer, and engagements

Brazil threatens to veto Germany joining the League of Nations Council (which would stop it joining the League at all) if Brazil doesn’t also get a permanent seat on it (no South American country currently has a permanent seat). Other countries (Italy, Spain) might block German entry to the Council if other countries don’t come in at the same time, but Sweden is threatening to veto the entry to the Council of any other country than Germany. (Also, if Germany doesn’t join the League, the Locarno treaties don’t go into effect).

During a heated debate in the House on relaxing Prohibition, Emanuel Celler (D-NY) reads out George Washington’s recipe for beer.

Rudolph Valentino denies rumors spread by Pola Negri that they are engaged. She pulled this same stunt with Charlie Chaplin.

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Today -100: March 10, 1926: Of Of briands, bootleggers and hijackers, municipal housekeeping, and amaaaaazing stories

Aristide Briand succeeds himself as prime minister of France, the 9th time he’s held the job. He’ll also be foreign minister, so he’ll have to scurry to Geneva for the talks on German entry to the League of Nations. This cabinet is further to the right than the last. No one thinks it will last long.

Charles English, supervisor of recreation of the Chicago Board of Education, says Chicago boys no longer play cowboys and Indians, but bootleggers and hijackers. The girls, he says, imitate screen vamps.

Bertha Landes is elected mayor of Seattle, the first woman mayor of a major US city, although she was acting mayor while Edwin Brown was out of town at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. She fired the corrupt chief of police; Brown reinstated him when he returned. It’s Brown who she just defeated on a slogan of “municipal housekeeping.” (The NYT reports, incorrectly, that the voters also voted in the city-manager plan, which would have more or less abolished the position of mayor).

The magazine Amazing Stories’s first issue appears. The first magazine exclusively devoted to scientifiction, as Hugo Gernsback called it (he didn’t coin the term science fiction, but he did put it into widespread use a bit later, after scientifiction failed to catch on) (don’t know who it was who later came up with “sci-fi,” which Harlan Ellison, who despised the term, always pronounced skiffy).

Was it just reprints of 19th-century stories? No! Here’s an original story by a teenage author:

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Today -100: March 9, 1926: Well, journalism and permanent revolution

Leon Trotsky is now a professor at the Moscow School of Journalism in his copious free time.

German nationalists are complaining about American negroes appearing on the Berlin stage.

France’s current lack of a government may delay Germany’s entry into the League of Nations, since a decision has to be made first on whether Poland, Brazil, or Spain are also admitted to the LoN Council. Germany insists that it has to be part of that decision, so it should only be made after Germany becomes a League member.

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Today -100: March 8, 1926: Mr. Watson, come here, and tell me how tall the Woolworth Building is

For the 50th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (its patent, anyway), a wireless phone call is successfully made between New York’s AT&T offices and the British Post Office in London. Reporters talked with their trans-Atlantic counterparts, two minutes each. They chit-chat about night life and whether you can obtain liquor in New York (yes). A reporter from the Westminster Gazette asks how tall the Woolworth Building is, to settle a bet about whether it’s taller than the Eiffel Tower. There was a phone cribbage game. In other words, they ran out of stuff to say each other. The listeners on the NY side say the sound quality is equivalent to local service, those in London say it’s better. Trans-Atlantic telephone isn’t ready to go commercial yet because of intermittent static and because so many radio-heads have built sets that can listen in on calls.

The 36-year-old Charlie Chaplin is dyeing his graying hair.

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Today -100: March 7, 1926: Of arrest warrants, poles, fakers, and ears

The JP who issued arrest warrants for the Passaic chief of police and 2 patrolmen for beating strikers can’t find any cops willing to serve the warrants.

There will be as many as 10 Arctic expeditions this year.

Rep. W.D. Upshaw (D-Georgia) slaps Robert Choate, the Washington correspondent of The Boston Herald, for writing that in a congressional debate on Prohibition (Upshaw’s for it), he got so excited that he forgot to use his trademark crutches. The slap came after Upshaw complained that people would think he was a faker and Choate responded “And I think you are one.” He’s not the only one who thinks that.

Dr. Fritz Pfuffer, a Viennese ear doctor, says city noises are making people’s ears bigger. In a couple of generations, they’ll be “like a dachshund’s.” 

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Today -100: March 6, 1926: Of cathcarts, confidence, and centenarians

A Passaic, New Jersey justice of the peace issues an arrest warrant for Chief of Police Richard Zober and 2 patrolmen for clubbing textile strikers.

A federal judge rules on Vera, Countess Cathcart’s writ of habeas corpus, saying someone can’t be excluded because of something that was not a crime where they did it (adultery in South Africa in this case). She can now stay in the US as long as she wants. The government was forced to admit to every argument brought by her lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame & the ACLU; named after three mediocre presidents). It was attempting to thwart a habeas hearing until Hayes threatened to personally take her to Ellis Island and demand they lock her up so he can then demand they unlock her up.

The French Cabinet led by Aristide Briand loses a vote of confidence.

Reports inform Coolidge that the recent drop in the stock market didn’t affect the commodity markets and that business fundamentals are so strong that everything’s just fine.

Tick tick tick.

Salem, Massachusetts Mary Elizabeth Newhall will have her 100th birthday next week – guess they didn’t get ALL the witches. She’s been walking with crutches since she caught polio at 3. Her father was the town crier from 1842 to 1881, when the town abolished the post.

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Today -100: March 5, 1926: No right to fill a man’s skin with liquor

A coffee-house waiter in Budapest leaves a suicide note saying that the reasons for his suicide and the persons involved in it are explained by a crossword puzzle he has constructed. The police can’t solve it.

After the violent police attacks on textile factory strikers in Clifton & Passaic, New Jersey yesterday, they are now wearing Great War trench helmets and gas masks. Reporters, who after having $3,500 worth of camera equipment destroyed by the fuzz yesterday, are now taking pictures and newsreel footage from planes and armored cars (the  type banks use). But the police have dialed down their thuggery. Edward Moore, who claims to have invented a “centrifugal riot gun,” which he invented at the end of the war and can shoot 4,000 rounds per minute, helpfully offers it to Passaic.

Federal Judge J.C. Hutchison (Houston) condemns Prohibition agents buying liquor for informants in sting operations: “Prohibition agents have no right to fill a man’s skin with liquor just to make a case.”

The Lord Chamberlain, Britain’s theatrical censor, orders changes in Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes at the request of Lord Craven’s friends, because it’s a theatre roman à clef (if that’s the term I’m looking for) based on their affair. Following Lord Cromer’s orders, the play’s location has been changed from South Africa, the words “lover” and “mistress” deleted, and the name of the Lord Craven character changed from “Rayhaven.” There will be a New York production next month, which will not have these alterations (it will close after 8 performances).

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Today -100: March 4, 1926: Of strikes and nickel

The Passaic, New Jersey police used fire hoses on textile factory strikers a day ago and now, along with Clifton police, attack strikers with tear-gas bombs and clubs and motorcycles. To be fair, some of the children the motorcycle cops run down had hit them with snowballs. The cops make a special target of press photographers and newsreel cameramen, smashing their cameras (and hands).

In its largest day of trading ever, the markets tumble following the Interstate Commerce Commission’s rejection of the Nickel Plate merger.

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Today -100: March 3, 1926: Of Bimbas

Anthony Bimba is convicted of sedition, but not of blasphemy, the prosecution having downplayed the charge under that 300-year-old law. The judge expresses annoyance at the Lithuanian community of Brooklyn using the legal system to conduct its internal disputes, calling it “over-contentious.” He fines Bimba $100. Bimba’s conviction will be reversed on appeal. He will become a naturalized US citizen in 1927, but in 1963 the government will try to deport him, claiming he failed to mention the 1926 prosecution when he applied for citizenship; the government will eventually drop that case, which was probably initiated in retaliation for his refusal to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957.

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Today -100: March 2, 1926: Watch out

The War Department turns down an offer by the Benrus Watch Co. (owned by three Jewish brothers who immigrated from, where else, Switzerland) to install – for free – a giant illuminated wristwatch on the Statue of Liberty. The War Dept (why is this their decision?) says a wristwatch would simply be too modern for the classical statue.

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