Today -100: June 19, 1926: In which is revealed what offends the moral sense

Stuff I should have been talking about earlier: The Pennsylvania elections this month, specifically the Republican gubernatorial and US Senate primaries, which in this very Republican state are the only ones that matter, were tremendously corrupt and tremendously expensive. They’re being investigated by the Senate. Gifford Pinchot, term-limited out of the governor’s office, lost the Republican primary for US Senate to Rep. William Scott Vare, but I’m sure there’ll be no hard feelings. American Federation of Labour Pres. William Green is pissed that someone forged a letter of him endorsing John Stuchell Fisher for governor; the Fisher campaign paid for an ad in the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times featuring the forgery.

A NYT editorial thinks the candidates (at least Pepper & Vare) were unaware of what was going on, placing the blame on the donors: “what offends the moral sense [is] the spirit in which rich men set out to win a political contest by means of long purses. ... the callous indifference, the sublime unconsciousness of doing anything wrong ... The real Pennsylvania scandal is the fact that Pennsylvania did not seem to know that it was doing anything scandalous.”

The leader of last month’s coup in Portugal, Gen. Manuel Gomes da Costa, fires Adm. José Mendes Cabeçadas, who the coup leaders appointed president & prime minister. Gomes da Costa will take both posts as well as minister of war. Martial law is declared.

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Today -100: June 18, 1926: Excessive offensive American propaganda is the worst kind of propaganda

Spanish Foreign Minister José de Yanguas says Spain will withdraw from the League of Nations since it turned out to be “an organization of war.”

Brown University is no longer Baptist; trustees and the U. president will no longer be required to be Baptist.

Australian censors ban King Vidor’s film The Big Parade for “excessive offensive American propaganda.”

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Today -100: June 17, 1926: Not everyone loves a parade

More voters in Ridgewood, New Jersey cast ballots in a referendum on a “mutt ordinance” which drops the inoculation requirement but bans unvaccinated dogs outside unless muzzled than voted in the congressional, Assembly or coroner races. The mutt ordinance passes. In other news, “mutt ordinance” is just fun to say. Mutt ordinance mutt ordinance mutt ordinance.

The Soviet Union has supposedly made a grant of $10,000 to the Pasteur Institute in French Guinea for an attempt at artificial hybridization of the human and anthropoid species, to prove evolution. Um, okay. This news comes from Detroit lawyer Howell England of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (if you were wondering what comes after Alcoholics Anonymous and the American Automobile Association), who says Dr. F. G. (Francis Graham) Crookshank, author of The Mongol in Our Midst, thinks orangutans can breed with the yellow race, gorillas with the black race, and chimps with the white race, producing fertile hybrids.

Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City refuses the Ku Klux Klan a parade permit. He says their demonstrations usually lead to rioting. Mayor Harvey Kistler of Niles, Ohio also refuses to issue kluxers a parade permit.

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Today -100: June 16, 1926: Had I fired I should not have missed

American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, who lived most of her life in France, dies at 82. Do the words “created a type of sturdy wholesomeness and naturalness” make you eager to seek out her work?

Another death of note: Catherine Evans, 91 or possibly 81, an actress who played the maid in “Our American Cousin” the night Lincoln was shot and therefore witnessed the assassination..

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his Cabinet resign, as was the custom (this was his 9th or 11th or something premiership, who can keep count), because of the franc’s fall.

The Coast Guard fires on the yacht of millionaire Arthur Curtiss James (the NYT identifies him as a former commodore, without noting that his commodorial service was in the New York Yacht Club) in the Long Island Sound, mistaking it in the fog for a rum-runner.

Not sure when the duel between Poland’s former PM Count Aleksander Skrzyński and Gen. Count Stanisław Szeptycki changed from the planned sword fight to pistols at 15 paces. The general fires first, missing, but Skrzyński refuses to shoot. “I shall not resort to this stupid, inconclusive and barbaric method of settling a quarrel which has been forced upon me.” He slightly undercuts this by adding “Had I fired I should not have missed. But I don’t care to do so.” By the way, the general tried to avoid the duel which he provoked, but was forced to go through with it by a “court of honor,” which is a thing.

The estate of the late Lucien Warner is much reduced because of write-offs as the result of the decline in popularity of the product his firm manufactured, corsets.

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Today -100: June 15, 1926: Boy, there’s a Brazilian joke here somewhere

Headline of the Day -100:

Some dude named Gary, probably. 

Brazil does indeed resign from the League of Nations, effective in two years by LoN rules.

Catherine Scott, who planned to raise funds for her husband’s insanity defense by fasting in a glass cage, is stopped by the police under a law forbidding the exhibition of the results of crime.

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Today -100: June 14, 1926: Of army chiefs, falling ceilings and parades

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who led that coup in Poland, cements his power-behind-the-throne position, being granted the status of Commander in Chief of the Armies for life rather than War Minister, so not removable by the government or Parliament or anybody.

The White House roof is in danger of falling down, Coolidge’s church’s plaster is falling down, and the movie theater in which that church is now holding services also has pieces come crashing down during services. Someone is trying to tell Coolidge something.

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (have we heard Trump say the word semiquincentennial yet?), the governors of the original 13 colonies will meet today and watch a parade. But is there even a cage match?

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Today -100: June 13, 1926: Of escape schemes, fasters, voting ages, and buttons

Charles Ponzi, who was supposed to be reporting to prison, has disappeared.

Mexico bans teachers & professors from participating in politics.

While her husband Russell Scott’s mental state is being evaluated in Chicago to determine if he can be executed for killing a drug store clerk during a hold-up (he was found insane, then he was found sane, and now there’ll be another hearing), wife Catherine is raising funds by fasting in a glass cage and charging admission.

The Bavarian Diet raises the voting age for state & local elections to 25, the Judiciary Committee asserting that youths take little or no interest in politics until they have family responsibilities. The voting age for federal elections, which is set by the federal government, remains at 21.

At the annual Mennonite conference, the younger generation call for end to the ban on buttons.

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Today -100: June 12, 1926: Of smuggling, strike funds, chimneys, and opium

An American Express employee tries to smuggle 13 ancient paintings out of Italy in the baggage of Cardinal Bonzano, who the smugglers figured wouldn’t notice that he was now traveling with 24 trunks instead of 23. The cardinal is “evidently annoyed at the attempt to use the Vatican mission to defraud the Italian Government.”

Britain complains to the Soviet Union about it having sent funds to support the General Strike™. They’re still sending money to the striking miners, so there may be another jolly stern note about that. The Soviet government replies that it has never contributed to any British strike funds, neglecting to add that it’s official Soviet unions which are doing so. The secretary of the miners’ union points out that American miners have also sent money but no one’s bitching about that.

The Coolidges will delay White House repairs, which will necessitate the family moving out, until next March when Congress disbands, despite the imminent danger of the roof falling on their heads. Cal wants civilian engineers to look at it because “army engineers would want to tear down the White House to repair a  chimney.”

India will end the export of opium, except for medical purposes, by stages by 1935.

Rabies is spreading in the Moscow region.

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Today -100: June 11, 1926: Of prohibition and Fascists fashing

House Republicans don’t plan to move forward at this time with the Coolidge Admin’s bill to tighten Prohibition enforcement and penalties.

Fascist Italy closes all local news agencies, leaving just 2 or 3 of “proved moral and financial integrity.”

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Today -100: June 10, 1926: Why bother with the roof when a big beautiful ballroom is so desperately needed?

The Coolidges will have to vacate the White House for at least 6 months while the roof is replaced. It hasn’t been decided where they’ll be living during that period.

One result of the coup in Poland: deposed former PM Count Aleksander Skrzyński will fight a duel, with sabers and everything, with Gen. Count Stanisław Szeptycki, who refused to shake hands at the Cracow Club. Except the general’s seconds reversed their acceptance of the duel, so now he’ll be fighting those two seconds and his own seconds. Which is a lot of duels.

Rep. W.J. Sears (D-Florida) narrowly defeats a primary challenge from Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter.

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Today -100: June 9, 1926: Of liberties, bunk, and smoking

Cook County (Chicago) Sheriff Peter Hoffman begins a one-month contempt-of-court sentence for having, in his role in running the county jail, granted special liberties to gangsters Terry “Machine Gun” Druggan and Frankie Lake. I’m not sure what those liberties were besides being allowed to come and go from the jail, but that seems like kind of a big one. Alliterative Warden Wesley Westbrook, who like Hoffman took large bribes from the Valley Gang, will also go to jail, and yes, it’s the same jail. In fact, Hoffman will still be sheriff while incarcerated, presumably with authority over the jail, but he’ll resign in December. 

NY Supreme Court Justice Aaron Levy grants an injunction against the citizens’ play jury order that The Bunk of 1926, a musical revue written by Gene Lockhart (father of June Lockhart and performed as the second Willie Loman in the original run of Death of a Salesman) be closed because it is “incurably objectionable.” The jury has no legal power to close a play, but their ruling resulted in Actors’ Equity banning its actors performing in it. Producer Ramsey Wallace points out that 8 of the 11 jurors “are named in the Social Register and they take it upon themselves to decide arbitrarily what the masses shall see and approve.” The play will close on the 19th, it’s not clear why, or indeed what was so incurably objectionable.

Gen. Erich von Ludendorff’s wife Margarethe recently filed for divorce. He responds, blaming the breakdown of their marriage on her smoking. He thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to smoke.

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Today -100: June 8, 1926: Of councils and the integrity of the entire Constitution

Brazil, pissed at not getting a permanent seat on the League of Nations Council, stops participating in the League and is threatening to pull out altogether. Spain may follow.

A gathering of Dry groups (the Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, etc) pick former 1-term Republican member of the NY State Senate Franklin Cristman to run against US Sen. James Wadsworth (R). Cristman telegraphs back his acceptance, saying there should be one candidate who stands for the integrity of the entire Constitution, meaning of course the 18th Amendment.

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