Today -100: May 2, 1926: Sordid capitalists are the worst kind of capitalists

Florida is boycotting Ohio industries because Ohio bans the sale of Florida land in Ohio, presumably because so much of it is fraudulent.

The British General Strike™ begins tomorrow, Monday. The coal strike, which was inevitable given the ending of government subsidies and the mineowners’ insistence on miners working longer hours for less money, is being joined by railroad workers, steel workers, newspaper pressmen, and a bunch of other unions. It’s not a true general strike as the Trades Union Congress (TUC) plans to escalate it by stages. The unions affiliated to the TUC give it the authority to negotiate with the government on their behalf. TUC General Secretary Ernest Bevin says, “We have no quarrel with the people. We are not declaring war on the people. War is being made by the Government, pushed on by the sordid capitalists.”

Italian newspapers say this could never happen in Fascist Italy (they didn’t do May Day yesterday, either).

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Today -100: May 1, 1926: Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity

The Spanish government exiles students and a Madrid U. professor of penal law, among others, to the Chaferine Islands, and suspends the newspaper Atalya for 8 days “for having published an article regarding the grazing grounds of the city.”

Fritz Rausenberger, the professor of ballistics (!) who invented the long-range gun Big Bertha, dies at 58.

Mussolini’s fat face will go on Italy’s banknotes, which is a very Trumpian move.

Walter Lippmann, “Puritanism De Luxe in the Coolidge Era,” Vanity Fair, May 1926 issue:

Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge, and nobody should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for a soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life. ... There have been presidents in our time who knew how to whip up popular enthusiasm. There has never been Mr. Coolidge’s equal in the art of deflating interest. ... He has discovered the value of diverting attention from the government, and with an exquisite subtlety that amounts to genius he has used dullness and boredom as political devices.

As a nation we have never spent so much money on luxury and pleasure as we are spending now. There has never in all history been such a widespread pursuit of expensive pleasure by a whole people. The American people can afford luxury and they are buying it furiously, largely on the instalment plan. And in the White House they have installed a frugal little man who in his personal life is the very antithesis of the flamboyant ideal that everybody is frantically pursuing. ... At a time when Puritanism as a way of life is at its lowest ebb among the people, the people are delighted with a Puritan as their national symbol. ... The Coolidges are really virtuous people in the old American sense, and they have provided this generation, which is not virtuous in that sense, with an immense opportunity for vicarious virtue.”

 

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Today -100: April 30, 1926: Of duels, series of molds, and aigoing

German Prez Hindenburg forces the Reichstag to change a proposed law requiring the sacking of  soldiers and civil servants guilty of dueling to one merely allowing them to be fired.

The French Academy of Science rejects the theory of Prof. Tissot of the Paris Museum of Natural History that “every living thing is but a series of mold”.

Japanese police in occupied South Korea have been suppressing Aigo gatherings mourning the former emperor/king Sunjong, who the Japanese dethroned in 1910 and died last week (the internet tells me that “aigo” means “oh dear” or “geez”). Another form this mourning takes is the stabbing of two Japanese aldermen in Seoul, one fatally.

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Today -100: April 29, 1926: Such a distinction is foreign to our soil

Chicago police think Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin was machine-gunned by killers imported from New York by, as they call him, “Al Brown, alias ‘Scarface Al’ Caponi” and John Torrio. They don’t know Capone was actually there.

Democrats in the House of Representatives filibuster (for a few hours, anyway) a bill to erect a monument to the 93rd Infantry Division, a segregated black unit that included the Harlem Hellfighters, in France. The bill is sponsored by the Hellfighters’ wartime captain, Rep. Hamilton Fish.

New York Supreme Court Justice William Carswell refuses a certificate of incorporation to the Colonial Association of Russian Workers and Peasants of America, because there are no peasants in the US: “Such a distinction is foreign to our soil.” The petitioners, naturalized citizens, “need education in Americanism,” Carswell says.

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Today -100: April 28, 1926: Of gangland killings, begging taxes, spas, and lepers

“Chicago gangsters” shoot up a car in Cicero with machine guns, killing Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. McSwiggin, a “hanging prosecutor” (7 executions in a 10-month period!) had unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Al Capone in the past, and Capone is one of the gunmen (well, he was there, he may or may not have personally wielded a Tommy gun), but McSwiggin wasn’t the target here. In fact, they didn’t know he was in the car; he was just heading to play cards with a couple of members of the O’Donnell Gang, one of whom, William “Klondike” O’Donnell, owned the car they were driving through Capone territory, when the Capone-ettes spotted it.

Capone’s involvement is not yet known.

The House of Representatives votes 196-4 to put Prohibition enforcement under the Treasury Dept.

German prohibitionists are pushing local option. The US is worried that local booze bans would reduce Germany’s national revenue, endangering its ability to pay reparations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is proposing to tax betting 5%, and his fellow Tories are not happy. It will end racing as we know it! It will force punters into back-alley wagers! It will legitimize betting! Will no one think of the farmers who grow the oats the race horses eat! 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who has “been in Georgia for his health,” buys the Warm Springs, Georgia spa he thinks is helping his polio.

The racial violence in Carteret, NJ has led to some arrests: not the angry white dudes, of course, but some news photographers who tried to get some local men & boys to brandish sticks and clubs for the camera. In Red Bank, 20-some miles away from Carteret, arson destroys a public school attended only by black students.

Ford Motor Comp. made a profit of only $29 on each car produced in 1925, down from $40 in 1924. Production difficulties are claimed to be the problem, and certainly not the declining popularity of the Model T.

The NY City Health Commissioner Louis Harris warns hospitals and dermatologists to be on the lookout for Antonia Ramoa, a woman with leprosy who escaped as she was being forcibly removed to the leper colony at Carville, Louisiana.

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Today -100: April 27, 1926: Sex!

A white mob burns a black Baptist church in Carteret, NJ and forces 100 black families out of the town after a couple of white guys are stabbed, one fatally, during a fight.

Mae West’s Sex opens, er, so to speak. It’s her first starring role. She also wrote and is directing it. The NYT calls it “A crude, inept play, cheaply produced and poorly acted”. So it will run for 375 performances.

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Today -100: April 26, 1926: He was against abuse of power before he was for abuse of power

Paris police investigate the story in a magazine that a ballerina, unnamed but obvious, bathes in 300 quarts of milk every day, which her valet then sells back to milk traders. They conclude that the story is made up.

Headline of the Day -100:

Zip the Pinhead, chief freak at Barnum & Bailey’s & Ringling Brothers Circus, has died at... 83? 69? Also known as “Zip - What Is It?”, a name supposedly bestowed upon him by Charles Dickens.

Sidney Barrett of Mahopac, NY and Hazel Williams marry despite a Ku Klux Klan warning to them not to (she may or may not have some negro blood). They’re supposed to be living with his uncle, but he got a gentle request from the Klan to allow the couple to live in his spare rooms but to admit any kluxers who happen to drop by.

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Today -100: April 25, 1926: Then make the most of it

Texas governor “Ma” Ferguson issues her re-election platform, including a defense of “the administration of the Fergusons.” Taxes are down and there hasn’t been a single lynching under her administration. She calls for a tax of 1¢ a cigar. “If Feargusonism is treason, then make the most of it” is her rather odd motto.

Poland: the government of Aleksander Skrzyński resigned last week after its finance minister resigned. He will try to form a new cabinet, this time with... wait for it... a Jew. An actual Jew. The way the article is written, it’s hard to tell if he’s got a specific Jew in mind or just figures that Jews are good at that finance stuff.

Princess Mary of Britain denies – vehemently – that she has bobbed her hair, after an unfortunate portrait made it look like she had.

German judges will no longer be allowed to snooze at the bench. For a century the criminal code has held that a judge’s physical presence, awake or otherwise, is sufficient to ensure a fair trial. However, the new rule only considers it sleep if it’s, like, really deep; light dozing and snoring are still acceptable.

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Today -100: April 24, 1926: Practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition

The Illinois State Democratic Convention calls for modification of the Volstead Act to allow states to permit light wines and beer. “We favor practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition.” The Republicans also meet, but fail to take any position on booze.

Germany & Russia agree a neutrality treaty.

Austria will change its army uniforms from green to grey, like the German uniform. They’re hoping for Anschluß by incremental stealth, hoping no one notices, or something.

Italy’s Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni creates a committee to combat birth control information or, as he terms it, “insidious, practical, pseudo-scientific neo-malthusian propaganda.” Italy’s greatest riches, Federzoni says, “is in the multiplication of its children, which is the strongest investment for invincible world expansion.”

The furniture of former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 84, is seized because he refused to pay the fine for delaying paying his taxes. He buys back the furniture before it’s carted away.

New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore does indeed refuse to meet the textile strikers’ rep Albert Weisbord and cancels an arbitration meeting, insisting that Weisbord should have had the “tact” not to show up.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot will premiere tomorrow at La Scala. Puccini died in 1924. Arturo Toscanini, who also premiered La bohème, will conduct.

In other opera news, Eduard Künnecke is adapting Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Almost finished, he says. He won’t finish it. I guess the next musical Dickens is Oliver.

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Today -100: April 23, 1926: Of gratification, trying English, and collapsible beds

Failed Headline of the Day -100:

“Ratification Gratification” was sitting right there.

Headline That... They Have To Have Known What They Were Doing, Right? of the Day -100:

That’s not the English language, which is tried but rarely in the US Senate to this day, but judge George Washington English of the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, a Wilson appointee, accused of, and now impeached for, various abuses of power.

The Passaic textile strikers pick Albert Weisbord to represent them, despite Gov. Harry Moore’s attempt to veto him. Will the guv refuse to meet with him?

The London production of Harlan Thompson & Harry Archer musical “Little Jessie James,” a big hit on Broadway a couple of years back, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because there is a bed in one scene. Thompson points out that it is only a collapsible bed, “but the censor declined to regard it as less objectionable for that reason.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1926: Of unmistakable Communists, territorial limits, and princesses & jixes

NJ Gov. Harry Moore intervenes in the Passaic region textile strike by talking with mill owners and some random strikers but he refuses to speak with the actual strike leaders because they’re “unmistakably Communists.” Albert Weisbord, a strike leader who is totally a Communist, calls Moore, who is totally a bad egg, “a bad egg.”

A Circuit Court rules that the US has no jurisdiction to seize foreign rum ships beyond the 3-mile limit, treaties or no treaties.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) was present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth, presumably not actually in the birthing chamber, or whatever they call it, following the ancient custom that a government official attend a royal birth to ensure there’s no hanky-panky with the line of succession.

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Today -100: April 21, 1926: Of princesses and child marriages

Disney Princess Elizabeth of York is born. Although she’s third in line to the throne, she isn’t expected to ascend to the throne unless... well, just unless.

The NY Legislature passes a ban on marriages of children under the age of 14. A provision to also ban marriages between 14 and 16 without judicial approval disappeared mysteriously along the way. By the by, there is only one woman member of the Assembly, Rhoda Fox Graves. There are no women in the NY Senate; the first, Graves, will be elected in 1934.

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