Today -100: November 5, 1926: My usefulness as a Judge has been seriously impaired

Annie Oakley, the sharp-shooter formerly with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, dies at 66. Her husband and fellow marksman Frank Butler will stop eating and die 18 days later. She once shot the ash off a cigarette in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s mouth. Um, he volunteered.

Prince Leopold of Belgium and Princess Astrid of Sweden get married in Stockholm. They’ll have to get married again in a Catholic church or the marriage won’t count in Belgium; they’ll do that next week. I guess they don’t get a wedding night until then.

Secretary of State Frank Kellogg blocks newly appointed Soviet ambassador to Mexico Alexandra Kollontai from traveling through the US to Mexico because US law says no commies.

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman governor in the US,  loses her re-election bid, so we’re down to one woman governor. FDR will name her director of the US Mint. She will die in 1977 at 101 years old.

George W. English, a Wilson appointee to the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, who was impeached in April for high misdemeanors and “tyranny and oppression,” resigns rather than face the impeachment trial. “My usefulness as a Judge has been seriously impaired,” he says in his resignation letter to Coolidge. It is, in fact, he says, his “patriotic duty” to resign, despite being totes innocent.

Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi, grandson of liberator of Italy Giuseppe Garibaldi, is arrested by the French Secret Service and confesses to having been paid by the Italian government to act as agent provocateur with Italian anti-Fascists in France, convincing them to plot against Mussolini and then having them arrested. He also raised funds for a “Republican march on Rome,” which never happened.

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Today -100: November 4, 1926: Of hostility, janitor-legislators, and jail breaks

Headline of the Day -100:

Worst horror movie ever.

South Dakota elects its first Democratic governor, William Bulow. It’s been a state since 1889.

A black man, K.F.L. Barnett, is elected to the Nebraska Legislature. He is a janitor.

An attempted jail break attempt at the Tombs in Manhattan is thwarted, the 3 prisoners shooting themselves after a long gun battle (2 had already been shot by guards).

After that rather lengthy preliminary hearing, Aimee Semple McPherson, along with her mother and another woman are bound over for trial for criminal conspiracy. McP’s lawyer says if the prosecution’s claim that her kidnappers didn’t actually exist is true, then there couldn’t have been a conspiracy. Which I’m pretty sure makes no logical sense.

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Today -100: November 3, 1926: Elections elections elections

Republicans lose 7 US Senate seats but retain a 49-46 majority (plus one Farmer-Laborite).

R’s lose 8 US House seats, retaining a 238—194 majority.

Republican candidates sweep the California elections and Democratic ones the Texas elections.

Al Smith wins re-election as NY governor with 53.3% of the vote, over Ogden Mills’s 43.8. In fact, the Dems sweep the state-wide offices except for Attorney-General Albert Ottinger.

Sen. James Wadsworth (R-NY) loses his seat to Robert Wagner (D). Wadsworth was thought to be a strong presidential candidate if Coolidge doesn’t run again. Now, not so much. Franklin Cristman, who ran as a dry candidate, says the campaign and the election results show that “organized whiskey,” which is the worst type of whiskey, controls the D & R parties in New York.

On the Democratic side, the defeat of Atlee Pomerene for the Senate seat from Ohio rather damages the possibility of his being the Democratic candidate for president in ‘28.

Massachusetts Sen. William M. Butler (R), who received his old friend Calvin Coolidge’s only personal endorsement loses to David Walsh, who served a previous term (1919-25) and will serve for the next 20 years. Butler is expected to resign as chair of the Republican National Committee.

The 3 women members of Congress (Florence Kahn of California, Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, and Mary Norton of New Jersey) are re-elected, and a new one, Katherine Langley of Kentucky, is elected. Kahn & Rogers replaced their dead husbands while Langley replaces a husband who is living, but in prison for Prohibition crimes.

Rutherford B. Hayes, son of the president, loses his run for the Florida Legislature.

The New York advisory referendum to ask Congress to modify Prohibition by allowing states to decide what constitutes an intoxicating beverage passes by 4 to 1 (7 to 1 in NYC).

Illinois’s referendum along the same lines passes with more than 60% of the vote, but California voters fail to repeal the state’s Prohibition enforcement law. Wisconsin votes to allow beer with less than 2.75% alcohol content, Montana repeals its liquor laws but Colorado and Missouri fail to permit booze for personal or domestic use. Nevada passes a referendum that simply states that Prohibition has failed to abolish liquor traffic abuses.

A California initiative to allow public schools to buy Bibles fails badly, while one to exempt cemeteries from taxes passes.

Iowa votes to allow women to be elected to the Legislature.

Oregon votes to remove from its 1857 Constitution the bit banning on negroes, mulattoes or Chinamen from the state.

At the Congress of Legal Medicine in Paris, a Dr. Villedent suggests that measuring the blood alcohol level of someone involved in, say, an auto accident, can be used to determine their level of inebriation.

In the wake of the most recent assassination attempt on Mussolini, there have been violent attacks on anti-Fascist newspapers, deputies, mayors, etc. 14 opposition periodicals are suspended. This was the excuse that The Duck was looking for. Meanwhile,

The Imperial Conference in London announces that its dominions, i.e. the whiter colonies (Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc), will henceforth be real nations. Governors will turn into viceroys.

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Today -100: November 2, 1926: Nothing short of death will satisfy us

Italian Fascists are super-pissed at the latest assassination attempt against Mussolini. Black Shirts are parading hither and yon demanding the death of Mussolini’s enemies. Fascist Party Sec. Augusto Turati rants to one crowd “Nothing short of death will satisfy us.” He says the numerous assassination attempts on The Duck shows they can’t be isolated acts. He wants punishment for not only the assassins but anyone who acts as an instigator, directly or indirectly. “It is all right to entrust the punishment of those responsible to the courts, but Fascism accepts the laws and the judges only on condition that their sentence be death.”

The Supreme Court rules that people can be tried for a prohibition violation in both state and federal courts without it violating double jeopardy because the 18th Amendment provides for dual jurisdiction. The NYT will editorialize tomorrow that Congress should ban federal prosecution for people already convicted by state courts. “Meanwhile, each fresh reminder of how much liberty has been thrown away in an attempt to repeal custom and to enact the morality of the Anti-Saloon League is helpful  for the return of common sense and something at least of earlier freedom.”

Al Smith says that if he is re-elected, he will not leave the state of New York to make speeches (i.e., while running for president) during his 2-year term. Well, he might go to New Jersey to play golf. Criticizing Odgen Mills for a campaign that lacks any substance but is rich with misrepresentation, he says a leaflet circulated in Harlem claims “Smith’s election will renew lynching in the South.” I’m not sure what the logic of that is.

I wonder where polling stations were located? An article about super-old voters mentions that the voting place for one, a blind dude in a wheelchair who voted for Abraham Lincoln (presumably in the 1860s, not now, but he’s 85 so who knows) is in a Brooklyn cigar store. A Col. Timothy Roberts, who voted for the prohibition referendum, was sgt. of the guard that watched over Lincoln’s body.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle praises Harry Houdini and says “His death is a great shock and a deep mystery to me.”

Houdini’s body is shipped from Detroit to New York in the air-tight coffin he was locked into for an hour in August, surviving through controlled breathing.

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Today -100: November 1, 1926: Of handcuff kings and assassinations

Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz) dies at 52. Presumably that student punching him in the stomach caused his appendix to burst, leading to his death after two operations, one for appendicitis, the second for peritonitis.

Benito Mussolini is nothing if not lucky in his assassins. 15-year-old anarchist Anteo Zamboni, celebrating Halloween and the anniversary of The Duck’s accession to power, shoots at the Duck in his car in Bologna, hitting his coat (and that of the mayor of Bologna) but not him. Zamboni is then captured by... Pier Paolo Pasolini’s father. Then the crowd kills him.

There will be all sorts of theories about what “really” happened and who if anyone, was behind the latest assassination attempt, the 4th in a year.

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Today -100: October 31, 1926: Of colored citizens, racist immigration bans, and executioners

The “Mills Colored Citizens’ Committee,” whoever they might be, calls on black people to vote for Republican Ogden Mills for NY governor. They say that in 3 terms as governor, Al Smith has failed to appoint a single negro to any job and his neglect of negro interests was in obedience to the Southern interests he’ll need for his 1928 presidential run.

Mexico bans entry by foreign negroes and deports 26 from British Honduras.

The name of the new state executioner of New York (official title: State Electrician) is revealed: Robert Elliott, who also does that job for Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. He’s performed 10 executions in NY since his appointment in January. He didn’t want his name made public, and his children are only just now finding out about his side hustle.

The Grand Lama’s palace in Llasa is now lit by electricity.

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Today -100: October 30, 1926: Of standing and racist land laws

Marshal Józef Klemens Piłsudski orders Polish Sejm (Parliament) deputies to stand while a presidential decree is read out tomorrow. This is understood as another sign of Piłsudski’s monarchism. (I don’t know what happened with this; there’s no followup story).

Floridians will vote on an amendment to the state constitution to ban land ownership by foreigners not eligible for citizenship, in other words Asians, and restrict it to suckers. It will pass with 58% of the vote. Voters will decline to repeal it in 2008 but will do so in 2018.

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Today -100: October 29, 1926: Of kluxers and coal

The Senate’s Campaign Fund Investigating Committee, investigating charges that the Ku Klux Klan and convicted murderer D.C. Stephenson used to run the state of Indiana, hears that Sen. James Watson was literally a kard-carrying member of the hooded order and that Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans worked to re-elect him in the May primaries. 

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says the ongoing coal strike means there won’t be a tax cut in the next budget.

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Today -100: October 28, 1926: Mills just pulled a bone

NY gubernatorial candidate Rep. Ogden Mills, in a speech to the Advertising Club, says Gov. Al Smith “cannot be trusted either in public or private life.” I don’t know what he’s implying about Smith’s private life, but Al, who also seems not to know, is super-pissed, and demands Mills retract, or else.

Gov. Al Smith says Dr. Pease’s statement on what his lab tests really showed about the quality of NYC milk “kind of puts the milk issue on the bum, doesn’t it?” “Mills just pulled a bone.” Republicans are suggesting that Tammany Hall pressured Pease to make the statement, which Pease denies (although he did break confidentiality with the R. Party that commissioned his report, until the Queens district attorney told him it was his “public duty” to go, um, public). Nevertheless, Mills continues to campaign on the “milk scandal,” saying “I suppose that if there were enough water in the milk so that a goldfish could swim in it, Dr. Pease and Dr. Harris [the health commissioner] would consider it good.”

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Today -100: October 27, 1926: Hearst has hung a milk can around his neck and he cannot get away from it

Dr. Herbert G. Pease, the lab dude that NY gubernatorial candidate Ogden Mills has been quoting about the poor quality of NYC milk, comes forward to say that his tests actually showed the milk to be perfectly fine and indeed of excellent quality. Mills, it seems, has been grossly misrepresenting his report. Gov. Al Smith says Mills was lying on William Randolph Hearst’s orders: “Hearst has hung a milk can around his neck and he cannot get away from it.”

Did you know there’s also a Socialist candidate for NY governor? It’s true! NYC Municipal Judge Jacob Panken.

Panken asks Smith & Mills to release the names of their contributors before the election. He suspects Wall Street interests are contributing to both the D & R parties, given their “single ultimate purpose, to serve faithfully the financial and commercial interests... Wall Street does not care which candidate is elected, as long as he is not a Socialist.”

Parliament censures Labour MP Alfred Salter after he refuses to retract his statement about having seen members drunk in the Houses of Parliament. He says if this is referred to a committee of privileges, he’s prepared to name the MPs in question. The House votes not to refer the matter to a committee of privileges. He is censured for making “a gross libel on the Members of this House and a grave breach of its privileges.”

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Today -100: October 26, 1926: You don’t hear the words tomfoolery and humbuggery nearly often enough these days

NY Gov. Al Smith calls on challenger Rep. Ogden Mills to “stop his tomfoolery” about milk.

Health Commissioner Louis I. Harris calls the lab tests that Mills commissioned on milk a “piece of conspirant humbuggery,” which is the worst kind of humbuggery, and says the tests are used “merely to alarm and befuddle those who have no technical knowledge” and they actually show that NYC milk is awesome. Also, the lab’s methods were faulty.

In Warsaw, it is widely believed that Marshal Józef Klemens Piłsudski, who led athe coup in May, is plotting to become king, which is all he’s wanted since a gypsy fortune-teller predicted he’d become king. He’s just met with a bunch of monarchists.

The Supreme Court upholds the president’s right to fire executive-branch officers without asking the Senate for permission, even where the posts required confirmation. This has evidently been a matter of dispute since Washington’s time.

The 4th anniversary of the Fascist coup in Italy this Thursday will be a national holiday and a day off, but government workers, and probably everyone else, will have to work on Sunday instead. There will be no speeches (except by The Duck, of course).

A German high court fines Wilhelm Jaenecke, the son-in-law of the late president Ebert and an attaché at the Foreign Office, for writing in the guest book of a hotel on Capri, where he was vacationing, “Here one feels so contented it is possible to forget a Hindenburg is President of Germany.” Hindenburg intervenes to remit the fine of 10 days’ pay, but Jaenecke will leave his government post for one in the Prussian civil service.

The House of Commons discusses whether Dr. Alfred Salter, Labour MP for Bermondsey, committed a gross breach of privilege (which is the worst kind of breach of privilege) when he said that he’d often seen MPs drunk in the House. Winston Churchill, of all people, says that if Salter’s charge is not repudiated it might injure Parliament’s reputation. Salter isn’t present, so further action is held over.

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Today -100: October 25, 1926: Of interested minorities, matches, and booze

Vice President Charles Dawes denounces primaries as creating “rule by an interested minority.” Selection of candidates by a nominating convention “would make possible an open fight by impartial delegates against possible corruption or a controlled candidate and better precipitates the issue before the people in the election.”

The steamship Falcon sets fire in England, coming ashore near Dover. Its cargo: 203 million matches.

Metropolitan Life Insurance Comp. says deaths from alcohol among its policy-holders increased 14% in the first 9 months of 1926, with the greatest increase in young persons.

W.C. Fields’s “So’s Your Old Man” premieres. I’ve not seen this one, and all the versions of it on YouTube are low-quality.

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