Today -100: April 16, 1926: Thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

Note to New York Times -100: must you refer to the king of Swaziland as “ebony ruler”? Sobhuza II tried to assert his rights to prevent an Englishman evicting Swazis; the Privy Council in London decides that he, while ostensibly ruler of a protectorate rather than a colony, has retained fewer rights than he thought he did.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) says the anxiety in the Cabinet over a possible coal strike is greater than that experienced during the war. PM Stanley Baldwin is personally intervening, but he doesn’t bring much to the table.

Mussolini, described as “radiant” and whose nose is no longer painted with iodine, leaves Libya after a speech explaining the importance of the colony to Italy: “Italians are people who reproduce rapidly and they are going to continue to do so. Italy is hungry for land and here is the opportunity to satisfy her.” What’s the Italian for lebensraum? He suggests to Italian colonists that “You cannot build a great colony by dancing at the Grand Hotel. You must learn the technique of colonization.”

Britain’s chief theatrical censor, the Lord Chamberlain, insists that American actor Frances Carson, playing Salome in Leonid Andreyev’s Katerina at the Barnes Theatre (alongside John Gielgud), wear more clothes, but she refuses the offer of a shawl.

An owl invades Calvin Coolidge’s White House bedroom, quietly perching on his bedpost.

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Today -100: April 15, 1926: Of rioting thomases, no relations, beer without saloons, and ladies being good

Norman Thomas, the Socialist who ran for NYC mayor & NY governor and will run for president a bunch of times, is arrested in Garfield, NJ (next to Passaic) for testing whether the reading of the Riot Act by cops at one small meeting bans all gatherings of strikers forever. He’s brought before Justice of the Peace Hargreaves, who refuses to allow him to have legal counsel.

Sen. William McKinley loses his bid for re-election in the Illinois Republican primaries in a campaign that largely focused on his support for the US joining the World Court. Some people criticize Coolidge for not coming to McKinley’s support given that he was backing Coolidge’s World Court policy.

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, head of federal Prohibition enforcement, says that allowing low-alcohol-content beer while still keeping saloons closed would make enforcement easier. Light wines he’s not so sure about. He will get a lot of shit for these comments.

France and Germany agree to allow each other’s planes overflight rights.

“Lady, Be Good,” the musical written by George & Ira Gershwin, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, is received with enthusiasm in London.

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Today -100: April 14, 1926: We call it contempt of court in New York

Herrin, Illinois, which we haven’t heard from for a while, again experiences Klan-related rioting, this time at the polls where the office of Williamson Country sheriff is up for grabs. Klan dude John Smith is attacked while he’s challenging the votes of Italians. Yadda yadda yadda, 6 dead, 3 kluxers and 3 anti-kluxers, the latter all sheriff’s deputies.

The NY Lege removes the Motion Picture Censorship Commission’s ability to censor newsreels.

British coal mine owners and the miners’ union meet, but fail to come to an agreement. This is coming to a head with the scheduled end of the government subsidy of the industry on May 1st. If affiliated unions also come out, we’re looking at a General Strike™.

The sheriff in Passaic County, New Jersey is to take over breaking the textile strike in the town of Garfield, invited by its mayor, William Burke, who happens to work for the Botany Worsted Mills. The sheriff will bring 150 deputies with riot guns and will read the riot act, which would ban public meetings and speeches and, of course, picketing. ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes, correctly pointing out that “a striker cannot get justice in Garfield” after Justice of the Peace Hargreaves sets a $5,000 bail for newspaper owner Robert Wolfe, charged with not obeying quickly enough an order to move along. The JP threatens to arrest Hayes for disorderly conduct; Hayes points out “We call it contempt of court in New York.” Cheeky! Hargreaves also stops Hayes’s stenographer and a reporter from taking notes because “This is not a court of law, it is a court of martial law.” Hargreaves complains about “outside agitators.” I wonder when that phrase was first used?

Yale University forgives the freshmen who rioted against compulsory chapel attendance.

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Today -100: April 13, 1926: Just the same, it’s a nightgown

The first duel, at least in France, conducted with 4-ounce gloves is fought, if that is the word, between a Romanian and a Swiss in a Paris gymnasium. One is nearly knocked out in the 3rd round and the Swiss dude declared the winner. The subject of their quarrel is not disclosed.

The Senate ousts Smith Wildman Brookhart (“insurgent Republican”-Iowa) from his seat by a vote of 45 to 41. A bunch of Republicans join the D. motion because Brookhart supported Robert La Follette rather than Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election. They replace him with Dem. Daniel Steck, who Brookhart defeated, barely, questionably, in the 1924 election.

Steck will fill out his term and lose his bid for re-election in 1930. Brookhart will run for Iowa’s other Senate seat, winning the primary less than two months from now and then the general, making him work colleagues with Steck, which I’m sure wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

Col. Alexander Williams, commander of the Marine Corps’ 4th Regiment, is being court-martialed for having been drunk at a party.

Sentence of the Day -100: “He said he had dim recollections of a fight, but could not recall that an ostrich was his opponent.”

At the Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, a police officer who attended the play on behalf of the Board of Education says he found the play not to be of a clean character, but under cross-examination admits it would not incite him to any questionable action. The sensitive copper says he blushed and “After I left that place I couldn’t look the world in the face for hours.” He says his “feelings were hurt, terribly hurt,” especially by one actress wearing a nightgown. A defense lawyer shows him a photo of the extremely modest garment. “Just the same, it’s a nightgown,” the bashful copper insists. “And so you object to flannel nightgowns, do you?” “Yes, sir.”

A new New York state law punishes restaurant owners who falsely claim their food is kosher.

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Today -100: April 12, 1926: No one can stop our inexorable will

Mussolini has hisself a “triumphal procession” in Tripoli, although what his triumph is is unclear. He has iodine on his nose from being shot, and a white plume topping off his uniform (that of an honorary corporal in the Fascist militia), but can I find a picture of the beplumed Moose? I cannot. The NYT says he “looked every inch a Roman ruler” as he rode on a horsie past “strange crowds which seemed to combine the wild savagery of the desert with the instinctive calm of an ancient people”.

Honorary Corporal Mussolini’s address to the Libyan natives asserts that his visit is not a mere administrative act but an affirmation of the Italian people. “No one can stop our inexorable will,” he brags.

The buses of the Philadelphia-Asbury Park Coach Company will play radio programs in the day and motion pictures at night.

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Today -100: April 11, 1926: Of Daddy & Peaches

Chinese Prime Minister Duan Qirui is toppled by a coup, as was the custom.

NY real estate developer Edward West “Daddy” Browning, 51, marries Frances “Peaches” Heenan, 15. Browning had some time before advertised looking for a 14-year-old to adopt as a companion to a boy (or girl; I’ve seen it both ways) he’d adopted as one of a pair with his first wife, who then fled to Paris with her dentist, keeping the other kid. Browning likes adopting girls, some of whom were essentially sold to him by their parents. Browning met Frances at a high school sorority dance which he’d sponsored, as one does. They married to short-circuit an action in Children’s Court brought by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, during a one-week postponement granted because someone supposedly threw acid at Frances.

The happy couple (I love that guy on the left)

The millionaire didn’t tip the town clerk, the article reveals.

Anyways, they’ll separate, he’ll try to adopt a 16-year-old who will turn out to be in actuality 21, a legal adult ineligible for adoption. Peaches will have a vaudeville career and an affair with Milton Berle. And I haven’t even mentioned the African goose. There’s a book, because of course there is.

Headline of the Day -100:

How proud they must be of themselves.

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Today -100: April 10, 1926: My voyage to Libya contains no menace

Mussolini says his trip to Tripoli isn’t about threatening other European colonizers: “My voyage to Libya contains no menace.” 

There’s a very brief military coup in Greece.

Germany is demanding, not its own air force per se, but for its army officers to be allowed to train as pilots. After all, they say, flying is now considered a sport, so officers have as much a right to fly as to play golf.

British miners reject the mineowners’ proposal that they accept reduced wages and longer hours. I’m sure this can all be resolved without any unpleasantness. 

The Post Office bars the April issue of Mencken’s The American Mercury from the mails.

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Today -100: April 9, 1926: Of reapportionment and redwoods

The House of Representatives refuses, by a vote of 265 to 87, to do its constitutionally mandated duty to reapportion congressional districts following the 1920 census. Some congresscritters claim that there is no such constitutionally mandated duty.

Prohibition agents padlock a redwood tree in Humboldt County, California which someone had turned into a still.

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Today -100: April 8, 1926: Fancy, a woman!

Irishwoman Violet Gibson, 49, daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was lord chancellor of Ireland on and off between 1885 and 1905, shoots Benito Mussolini right in his fat face, grazing his fat nose (you know that thing he did where he crosses his arms and tilts his fat head back super-smugly? that’s what saved him from the bullet entering his fat brain). Then her gun jams. This is not the first assassination attempt on The Duck, nor will it be the last, but Gibson was the only woman would-be assassin and the only one who actually succeeded in shooting him. “Fancy, a woman!” he says. The Duck calls for no disorder, but there is, of course, disorder, with Fascists attacking the remaining opposition newspapers and chanting slogans in the streets.

Annoyingly, this will just increase his popularity. Pope Pius says Moose was “spared by God.” After a year of back and forth in the Italian government over how to deal with this – portray it as a conspiracy, put her on trial, treat the whole thing as an amusing incident and put it behind them as quickly as possible, (the Duck’s approach), claim Gibson is insane (which she kinda is, just look at her eyes! LOOK AT HER EYES!),

(although, compare and contrast that image, printed in many newspapers, with this, in today’s paper

or this, as they appear now)

They’ll deport her to Britain, where she will spend the remaining 30 years of her life in an insane asylum, abandoned by her embarrassed family. There’s a biography of her, and there’s an Irish television documentary, available free on Tubi.

Capt. George Wilkins & Lt. Carl Eielson fly over the Arctic Ocean, looking for previously undiscovered land to claim for the US. They don’t find any. They plan to explore the Pole of Inaccessibility, presumably looking for Bond-villain bases.

Yet another clash between textile strikers and cops in Passaic, NJ. Small boys throw stones at the police chief’s car. The American Legion deploys on the side of the mills but are forced to flee.

Judge James Parmenter of the Boston Municipal Court acquits H.L. Mencken, saying the American Mercury does not tend to corrupt the morals of youths. He finds all the articles in it “intellectual and of serious nature,” although he just doesn’t understand the one about jazz.

A group of “fanatical university students” in Budapest are arrested for planning an armed invasion of Czechoslovakia. A “former archduke” is rumored to be involved.

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Today -100: April 7, 1926: Of Shylock nations, quacks, shonks, pretenders, werewolves?, and sex magazines

Fascists in Venice, pissed at the US Senate’s delays in passing the war debt settlement and at Sen. William Borah’s comments during the debate about Fascist violence in Italy, attack sailors from US destroyers. In the Piazza San Marco, Fascists call one sailor “a fat swine and the representative of a Shylock nation.” The four destroyers abruptly leave Venice, possibly pursued by Fascist gondoliers.

There’s a movement to “boom” Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler for the Republican nomination for governor of New York. They think an opponent of Prohibition like him is the party’s best chance, or to put it another way, that Prohibition may be a decisive issue in 1926.

The New York Legislature passes a bill requiring physicians to be registered every year. There is a problem, or at least a panic, over “quack” doctors.

The New York State Assembly rejects the Shonk Bill for a 48-hour week for women and minors. Women are currently limited to 54 hours.

Herbert Shonk is my new favorite name.

A “congress” of Russian exiles in Paris chooses Grand Duke Nicholas, the first cousin once removed of the late Czar Nicholas, to lead the “glorious task of liberating our country.” He replies that it is the poor oppressed Russian people who “have the right to establish the basis of their existence.” In other words, start without me.

Elsewhere, Prince Jean, Duke of Guise takes over as the new pretender to the French throne from the Orléanist line, following the death of Prince Louis Philippe. He did have the option of renouncing the “title” and thus avoid having to leave France under the 1886 law exiling the heads of the 3 overthrown royal lines, but he boldly steps up, saying “I lay claim to all his [Louis Philippe’s] rights...” Of which there are none. “I assume all the responsibilities...” Of which there are none. “and I accept all the duties...” Of which there are none. “...of that position.” He will call himself King Philip VIII. He is married to his cousin, because of course he is.

In Berlin on Easter Monday, Communists and Werewolves fight over a café, which is probably not as entertaining as it sounds and which leads to one death and one wrecked café. In Munich, police break up Communist conferences.

H.L. Mencken counter-sues Franklin Chase over his arrest for selling an issue of the American Mercury. He informs the judge that the Merc is not a sex magazine, which makes you wonder – or is it just me? – what a sex magazine edited by H.L. Mencken would be like.

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Today -100: April 6, 1926: Malicious prosecutions are the funnest kind of prosecution

Former New Mexico governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, which is not a very New-Mexico-governor sort of name, kills  himself, possibly due to illness. His obit very nearly spells his name correctly.

H.L. Mencken is arrested on Boston Common, in a pre-arranged test case/publicity move, for selling an issue of The American Mercury to Franklin Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, who has been trying to get the Merc prosecuted and banned from the mails at least since it published an article, “Keeping the Puritans Pure” by A. L. S. Wood, of which he was the subject, although the court case will be about the article “Hatrack” by Herbert Asbury, which is about the hypocrisy of small towns towards “harlots” and is sadly free of “obscenity,” if you ask me.

Former Kansas governor Jonathan Davis, acquitted on charges of selling pardons, sues three Kansas City newspapers, various editors and reporters, prison guards, a highwayman, and a bank wrecker, for libel and malicious prosecution.

At the 96th annual conference of the Mormons, Mormon Pres. Heber Grant warns against immodest skirts and afternoon teas.

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Today -100: April 5, 1926: Looks like I’ll have to run

Austria’s Supreme Court abolishes stage censorship.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, now “cleared” of having sold pardons, says “Looks like I’ll have to run” for governor again.

Mussolini will visit the Italian colony Tripoli. He’s going there on a warship. The Fascist paper Popolo d’Italia, which translates, I believe, as The Poppadom of Italy, says the ship recalls the ships of the Punic Wars: “It is a spectacle of force, not a parade; it is a majestic sign of greatness, not the order of the day in a debating hall.” This excursion is supposed to show the unified nature of the new Italy, putting aside petty regional squabbles in favor of oppressing people in Africa like a big boy nation. Later this month there’ll be a National Colonial Day.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot warns state employees not to campaign against his candidacy for US Senate, or else.

A secret meeting last week of royalists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia agreed to establish a monarchist international.

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