Today -100: April 19, 1923: America is dancing herself into war

Yankee Stadium opens. Babe Ruth hits its first home run. Yay.

The Florida Legislature’s lower house votes to keep the peonage system of leasing out convicts, but abolish flogging.

In Orange, Texas, a mob gathers outside the jail holding Clarence Smith, a black man accused of writing improper notes to white women. Before they can lynch him, he cuts his throat and is now dying. “The crowd was quieted.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Bavarian government thinks the Leipzig court’s warrants on Hitler and two editors should be executed.

The Polish National Assembly rejects the Jewish deputies’ proposal for consideration (I assume that means debate/discussion) of the recent anti-Semitic riots. Nationalist deputies then physically attack the Jewish deputies as they walk out. (I assume there isn’t an actual Jewish Party; would be nice to know their actual party affiliation[s]).

New (sigh) dancing record:  Arthur Klein of Cleveland, 82 hours and still going (he’ll make it to 88 hours only to have his record immediately broken). Also, just since yesterday’s paper there have been new records set for women & for couples. Vera Sheppard, a record-setter Tuesday, says “The only thing that annoyed me was having a man’s arm around me all the time.”  The D.C. police can’t find any law they can use to stop dance marathons there, although they would dearly love to, according to Mina Van Winkle, who is chief of the D.C. police women’s bureau and not, as her name suggests, a character in a mediocre children’s book. “A dance epidemic always precedes national disaster, as clouds precede a storm,” she says. “America is dancing herself into war.”

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