Today -100: July 6, 1920: Normal men and back to normality

The Democratic National Convention takes ballots #23 to 36 during Monday’s day session. McAdoo gains strength, surpassing Cox on the 30th ballot, and retains his lead thereafter, although the shifts in votes between ballots are minor. Several motions to break the deadlock by dropping the bottom candidate all lose. The convention reconvenes at night and finally nominates James Middleton Cox on the 44th ballot at 1:39 a.m.

On the 33th ballot, one vote is cast for Laura Clay, a Kentucky suffragist and a delegate, the first such vote for a woman. The second, 3 ballots later, went to another Kentuckihoovian, Cora Wilson Stewart. Ring Lardner gets half a vote from Missouri on one of the ballots.

Warren G. Harding gives his first speech as Republican candidate for president, from his front porch to a crowd of Marionaires, as Wikipedia tells me the residents of Marion, Ohio are styled (the article calls them Marionites). He says government needs “normal men and back to normality” rather than one-man government by “the superman,” a clear insult to Kryptonian-Americans. He also talks about restoring two-party politics. In other words, he’s downplaying his own future role in a very un-Trumpian manner.

The conference in Spa, Belgium, opens and goes badly from the start. The German delegates, including Chancellor Constantin Fehrenbach, want to discuss economic matters (reparations) before moving on to disarmament, and just to make sure of that they didn’t bring along the defense minister or the military chief. The Allies, especially France, tell them that disarmament must come first and end the session abruptly, telling them to come back tomorrow with those personages. There is some talk that French PM Alexandre Millerand was tricked, that in conceding that there be negotiations with Germany, rather than ultimatums as has been the policy until now, he accepted the possibility of a revision of the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

Black postal clerk James Spencer, who stabbed a white fellow worker on a mail car in Mississippi, is lynched.

Hungary’s minister of education orders high schools to limit Jewish students to 25% of total students, down from the current 50%.

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