Today -100: October 17, 1926: Equal rights are all we are asking

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover, in a speech for senatorial candidate James Wadsworth, says a Democratic-controlled Senate would cripple the Coolidge Admin’s work. “If our opponents shall be returned at this election, our legislative branch comes into conflict with the Executive, and we shall have neither party responsible and no direction of any sort.” In other words, he’s calling for one-party government. 

After that string of retaliatory mob shootings, Chicago politicians ask for a pause in violence during the elections. One of Al Capone’s lieutenants says they’re fine with that as long as the politicians make the North Side Gang “behave.” “Equal rights are all we are asking.”

“That wild beast called anti-Semitism,” as Soviet Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunatcharsky calls it, seems to be raising its wild head in Russia, and the government is trying to put a stop to it. Lunatcharsky says the cause of it is the fear of the middle classes and intelligentsia of competition from Jews, with their high intellect, ability, and enterprise. There are plans to colonize 200,000 Jews in the Crimea and, to try to head off a reaction rooted in the traditional Ukrainian peasant anti-Semitism, grant other lands to Ukrainians.

8 states – NY, Wisc., Nev., Ill., Colo., Missouri, Montana, California – will vote on Prohibition next month, some on modifying the Volstead Act, some (CA, Colo., Mont., Missouri) on eliminating state-level enforcement.

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Today -100: October 16, 1926: Of milk, royals, and jury fees

Ogden Mills claims that adulterated milk is flooding New York City, even Queens & the Bronx. He evidently thinks this is the issue he can ride into the governor’s mansion, I guess.

More fighting in the Prussian Diet as it ratifies the deal giving the former royal family enough money and property to make them the richest family in Germany, if not Europe. The Communists are not best pleased. Their deputy Wilhelm Kasper steals the large brass bell normally used to call for order and rings it whenever the president of the Diet tries to use a smaller, until Kasper is thrown out. The Socialists sit the whole thing out, abstaining from the vote and the fisticuffs. 

In a Kansas City court case in which a black man stands accused of “cussing out” a black woman, the jury refuses to give its verdict until it’s paid its $1 fee, for which they’d ordinarily have to wait until next month. So the judge locks them up while he goes to lunch, allowing them only bread and water.

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Today -100: October 15, 1926: Of libs, Germans, and souls

Herbert Asquith (aka Lord Reading and Asquith) resigns as leader of Britain’s Liberal Party after months of squabbling with David Lloyd George, to whom he is now ceding the field.

The new Czech Cabinet will include ethnic Germans – Sudeten Germans, if you will – for the first time. Robert Mayr-Harting will be justice minister and Franz Spina will be public works minister.

Thomas Edison thinks there might be such a thing as an immortal soul after all. He suggests religious teachers look for genuine evidence, but does not suggest how they should do that.

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Today -100: October 14, 1926: A recruiting film?

The Rhode Island Republican Convention calls for Prohibition to be put to a new referendum (but with strict enforcement until then).

Vice President Charles Dawes’s call for the abolition of primaries and a return to nominating conventions is not going over well with some Republican leaders.

Lon Chaney’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is still banned in Britain, not because of its content but because when the film arrived in Southampton last year, it was given a military escort by Territorials who were tricked into thinking it was a recruiting film.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, introducing the title character, is published simultaneously in Britain and the US (it was Disney which viciously stripped him of his hyphens).

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Today -100: October 13, 1926: There’s enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street

Dr. Alfred Salter, Labour MP for Bermondsey, says he’s seen many MPs drunk in the House of Commons chamber, from all parties but especially Tories. He says maybe Parliament having its own bars is not such a good idea.

Al Capone is questioned about yesterday’s machine-gunnery by the befuddled Chicago PD but is not under arrest. He tells a reporter “there’s enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street, but they don’t see it.”

Yugoslavia, whose navy consists of a single light cruiser, would like to buy Belgium’s entire navy, which is evidently for sale.

Sir James Parr, High Commissioner for New Zealand, complains that most of the films shown in the country’s 350 cinemas (a lot more than it has in 2026) are American and almost none British: “Are New Zealanders to be completely Americanised?” Also, American films suck, he says.

Headline 

Said uniform consists of “a black cocked hat adorned with white ostrich plumes, a black swallowtail coat, with gold buttons and lace, and black trousers.”

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon says of Mussolini: “Many of his measures are unique, indeed. But they are effective, and he certainly is making a new nation out of Italy.”

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Today -100: October 12, 1926: Of mistrials, mob violence, dodging milk, and criminal petit bourgeois opposition

The federal trial of former attorney general Harry Daugherty ends in a mistrial when the jury fails to come to a verdict.

In retaliation for last month’s attempt by Chicago’s North Side Gang to rub out Al Capone, Capone gunmen kill the Gang’s head Hymie Weiss, 28 (aka Earl Weiss, born Henryk Wojciechowski), and gangster Paddy Murray in a machine gun attack outside the North Side Gang hq, Schofield’s Flowers, also wounding 3 others. One of the gunsels – not that the cops have any idea who they are – is called Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt.

NY Gov. Al Smith accuses challenger Ogden Mills of “talking about milk for political purposes.” He calls the Republican platform “the coldest and clammiest document” he’s ever seen.

Mills says Smith really just wants to be president and is only running for re-election because Tammany Hall ordered him to.

The Prussian Diet discusses – with the occasional thrown water tumbler – the settlement with former kaiser Wilhelm. Some are worried about a provision setting aside Bad-Homburg Palace for his use if he ever comes back to Germany. They are reassured that he won’t do that because then he’d have to pay taxes on his income and property like a common commoner.

The Soviet Politburo takes measures to prevent the opposition (Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc) being heard, including sending claques to meetings to disrupt speakers and censoring reports of meetings at which they were able to speak anyway. Pravda accuses “the criminal petit bourgeois opposition” of “aiming at undermining the party discipline and... trying to open up fresh discussion and foist upon the party decisions long ago rejected.”

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Today -100: October 11, 1926: Of baseball, illegal uniforms, and gas

The St. Louis Cards win the World Series over the Yankees. I’m reliably informed that this story is about baseball.

During the game, baseball fans in Emporia, Kansas gather outside the Emporia Gazette offices to watch the scores change on a magnetic score board, which sounds super-exciting. Clergy complain about this Sunday activity, although the Gazette, which started doing this with last Sunday’s game, pointed out that the game began 30 minutes after services.

The German League for the Rights of Man charges former prince Wilhelm (grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm) with wearing the uniform of an army lieutenant during maneuvers (he was made a lt. before the war, when he was 10, probably on merit, right?). Gen. von Seeckt was fired as Army Chief for allowing Willy to do this.

The American Legion opposes the ratification of the Geneva protocol banning the use of poison gas in war. It says gas is humane and effective. The opposition to poison gas, according to John Thomas Taylor, chair of the Legion’s Legislative Committee, comes from pacifists, not practical soldiers.

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Today -100: October 10, 1926: Of prospective wars, lynchings, and weddings

The Daily Express (UK) claims that Mussolini is planning to go to war with Turkey to gain “influence” on the Aegean coast.

A mob in Doyer, Tennessee seizes and lynches a black man, Rip Bell, who supposedly killed a farmer during a fight over a craps game (or “‘crap’ game,” as the NYT puts it, which is not what it was called then or ever).

The world’s first Esperanto-language wedding takes place in London. He’s British and she’s Austrian. There’s a Reuters newsreel of it on YouTube, obviously silent so what’s the point of that?

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Today -100: October 9, 1926: Of lynchings

In Aiken, South Carolina, a lynch mob of 100 to 150 assholes break into the county jail and abduct (almost certainly with the connivance of the sheriff, as opposed to the bullshit version given in this article) 3 negroes, one of them a woman, charged with murdering the kluxer sheriff last year in a shoot-out when he raided their farm looking for illegal liquor. They’d been convicted but the state Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial; yesterday the judge directed a not guilty verdict for... wait for it... Demon Lowman. The verdicts for the other two, Lowman’s sister & cousin, had not yet been delivered when the mob jumped the gun, as it were. Judge Lanham convenes the Grand Jury to do “the most searching inquiry possible” and says the lynchings were a disgrace to civilization and the white race. You can guess how effective the most searching inquiry possible will be.

The NYT says the lynchings were “a wanton act of savagery,” which is the worst kind of acts of savagery. It notes that the prisoners were let loose and then gunned down “in Mexican style” as they ran.

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Today -100: October 8, 1926: Religious war? OK!

George Key, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic State Committee, says Republican activities are “peculiarly calculated to produce a religious war in Oklahoma.” I think that’s about Johnston backing Al Smith for president in ‘28. The D’s candidate for governor, Henry Johnston, is an open member of the Ku Klux Klan; Republican candidate Omer Benedict admits to having been a kluxer in the past. 

The Texas House of Representatives demands that Gov. Miriam Ferguson fulfil her promise to resign if she lost the D. primary, as she did. The State Senate then kills the measure as not coming under the terms of Ferguson’s call for the special session.

At former attorney general Harry Daugherty’s trial, his lawyer explains that when he burnt all his bank records, it was “in some mad, lone moment”. The lawyer blames the whole bribe-taking thing on Dirty Harry’s friend Jess Smith, who conveniently committed suicide 3 years ago.

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Today -100: October 7, 1926: Without they first have the endorsement

Lamartine Griffin Hardman, 71, described as a “banker, cotton mill owner and practising physician,” wins the Democratic run-off primary for Georgia governor, one of many Georgia elections this year where Klan-backed candidates lose  big time.

The Indiana Republican newspaper editors’ organization releases a photostat of a contract signed in February 1925 by John L. Duvall, promising that if he is elected mayor of Indianapolis with Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson’s support (which he was), “I promise not to appoint any person as member of the Board of Public Works without they first have the endorsement of D.C. Stephenson” and to appoint Claude Worley chief of police. Duvall says it’s a forgery. It will be the basis of his corruption conviction a year from now.

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Today -100: October 6, 1926: Of endorsements and royal property

In the New York elections, William Randolph Hearst comes out for Ogden Mills (R) for governor and Robert F. Wagner (D) for senator. Neither of them seem to be especially thrilled by the endorsement.

Prussia settles former kaiser Wilhelm’s claims to get his shit back. The Hohenzollerns will get 20 million marks – which is the equivalent of some money – in cash, 280,000 acres of land, a few castles, etc. Willy rejected a better deal a while back but complete expropriation has been getting more and more popular, so... He still lives in the Netherlands, banned from returning, but the princes have drifted back to Germany. Communists want them expelled.

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