Today -100: April 14, 1923: Of men on horseback, scraps of paper, and cake, so much cake

There have supposedly been two recent assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini (I don’t think there have been), but he continues to expose himself to assassins by using the same entrance to the city, and “Every Sunday Mussolini is seen on horseback traversing the quarter filled with Communists.”

Mussolini would really like to get rid of some of his excess population, and offers to send specially picked farm laborers to make up the US agricultural labor shortage (ag pop dropped by 460,000 in 1922 as black people fled the South). However he won’t allow US officials to inspect the selected immigrants before they leave Italy. The US would have to change its restrictive immigration laws if it wants to take up Italy’s kind offer, which of course it won’t.

William Jennings Bryan addresses the West Virginia Legislature on behalf of a bill to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, which he says renders the Bible “a scrap of paper.”

The wedding cake of the Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowen-Lyon will be 300 pounds (weight, not money), according to the front page of the NYT.

Westinghouse will not pay license fees for music on its 4 radio stations, so it’ll be all public domain classical music and She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain from now on.

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