Today -100: August 1, 1923: Elimination is improving

Pres. Harding is feeling much better. Phew.

In fact, Harding is well enough to read the newspapers with their big headlines about how sick he was.

I’ve spent too much time trying to figure out what “elimination is improving” means, but I’m now fairly sure that the appearance of the phrase on page 1 of the Paper of Record is not a reference to the presidential poop. Fairly sure.

Vice Pres. Coolidge only just found out about Harding’s illness. He’s vacationing at his father’s house in a tiny Vermont town with one telephone and no Sunday stage, hence no Sunday newspapers arriving before Monday. He doesn’t intend to go to D.C.

The NYT suggests maybe not sending presidents out on arduous cross-country trips in the future.

Sen. Oscar Underwood (D-Alabama) says he’s running for president. He says it’s time for a Southerner to again “bear the banner of democracy”. He calls for more international involvement. He doesn’t apologize for having opposed Prohibition.

German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno plans to introduce “Rhine-Ruhr sacrifice” taxes. Given the collapse of the mark, he’d have been ejected from office by now if someone else was willing to take the job. The Cabinet supports doubling the income tax.

You know who don’t want to be paid in useless marks? The printers in the plants that print useless marks, who go on strike.

In the Ruhr, the French occupy 5 more mines whose workers go on strike, and the Belgians expel (from office or from the territory? unclear) the burgomaster and 5 city councilmembers in Aix-la-Chapelle.

An Uxbridge (Massachusetts) court judge orders home-brewed beer returned to Catherine Pramere, a nursing mother who insists beer is necessary for her diet. She doesn’t try to get the cops to return the moonshine whiskey they seized along with the beer.

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