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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Today -100: October 24, 1926: Of confused and troubled dragons, milk evil, and shameless violations of party discipline

Judge Webster Thayer, who has presided over the various Sacco and Vanzetti trials in an extremely biased and unprofessional manner, denies them a new trial, calling Celestino Madeiros, who confessed to the murder, a crook and a liar.

D.C. Stephenson refuses to answer questions from a delegation led by a newspaper publisher about the Klan dominance of Indiana politics during his Ku Klux Klan grand dragonship. “I am confused and troubled and I can only think of my own personal liberty and the individual peril I am in,” he tells them.

Headline of the Day -100:

Italy bans women from being mayors. So Mussolini first gave women the municipal vote, then before they could exercise it made the post appointed rather than elective, now this.

Leon Trotsky & Lev Kamenev are ousted from the Politburo & Grigory Zinoviev is expelled from the Comintern for “a shameless violation of party discipline,” which is the worst kind of violation of party discipline.

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Today -100: October 23, 1926: Of pardons, lynchings, and wiener dogs

The Texas Legislature’s investigating committee looks into the practice of selling pardons by Frank O’Rourke, secretary of the State Prison Commission, in partnership with gubernatorial spouse James Ferguson. Warden of the State Pen N.A. Speer testifies that a bunch of people showed up at the execution of two black men as guests of O’Rourke, proceeded to get super drunk and partied through the execution and the whole next day.

Georgia arrests 8 men, and is hunting 7 others, for the lynching of a white man.

Dachshunds, which were mostly “got rid of” in Britain during the war, reappear for the first time since 1913 at the big dog show.

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Today -100: October 22, 1926: Of milk and (joke I could only write if I looked up the lyrics to that song, which I won’t do)

The lab that NY gubernatorial candidate Rep. Ogden Mills has been citing to prove that milk in New York City is bad and adulterated and icky says the samples it analyzed show “nothing deleterious,” although they won’t show anyone the reports they made at the behest of Mills and the R. party. Mills says he’ll only show it while testifying at a Grand Jury; I guess he’ll just keep any information about the alleged great milk danger under his hat until then.

The Soviet Union expels H.D. Anderson, the last American YMCA person left in the country.

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, is published, with 5,090 copies printed.

At the Princess Theatre in Montreal, a McGill student punches Harry Houdini in the stomach.

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