Today -100: October 21, 1924: Of headless chickens

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx having failed to bring Socialists and Nationalists into the government, the Reichstag will be dissolved and new elections held.

In the 3 years since the Volstead Act was passed, there have been 177,000 arrests just at the federal level, with prison sentences adding up to 7,000 years.

W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP calls on blacks to vote for Robert La Follette and drop the Republicans.

Bobby Franks’s father Jacob establishes a trust fund to continue the fight against any effort to release Leopold n’ Loeb from prison, even after his own death (which will be in 1928).

Éamon de Valera has said he’ll go to Northern Ireland to campaign for republican candidates in the UK general election. NI says he’ll be arrested if he tries it.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Henry MacCracken, president of Vassar.

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Today -100: October 20, 1924: Of slush, truancy, and matadors

In the absence of proper opinion polls, John W. Davis, like the Republicans, over-estimates the popularity of the Progressives, saying they’ll carry 6 to 8 states. He sees this as a revolt within the Republican Party, which will take votes only from it and result in Coolidge’s defeat.

The Republican slush fund is being used in Tennessee to pay the poll taxes of 25,000 or so Republican voters.

The Chicago superintendent of compulsory education says husbands of wives 16 years old or younger are legally responsible for their child-brides going to school and can be arrested for their truancy.

The “authorities” in Spain, whoever they might be, turn down a Señora Reverte who wants to be a matador. They say it’s dangerous and not fitting for a woman, although women can be picadors and banderillos (sic). (Update: This is María Salomé Rodríguez Tripiana, who fought as La Reverte and was actually born male, or so they claimed after the interior minister banned female matadors in 1908 as “an inappropriate spectacle and so contrary to culture and all delicate feelings” – you know, the delicate feelings of people who enjoy watching bulls stabbed.)

Trans matadors is not something I expected to be googling today.

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Today -100: October 19, 1924: Of electric coffee, assassins, and oases

Nominations close for the British general elections. 38 win their seats unopposed, including Tory leader Stanley Baldwin. The Liberals are contesting only 55% of the seats. 41 of the 1,405 candidates are women, of whom 12 are Tory, 6 Liberal and 22 Labour (Spoiler Alert: 4 will be elected).

NY Gov. Al Smith campaigns in Buffalo, where Mayor Francis Schwab (R), who was originally nominated by his friends as a practical joke – a brewer, he was under indictment at the time for possession of liquor – has been trying to make the names of Klan members public, fighting his police commissioner to do so. So the Klan is a big source of controversy in Buffalo, and Smith is here to help. He denounces Coolidge’s policy of silence.

The Klan holds a meeting in the fairgrounds outside Worcester, Massachusetts. As they leave, townies throw stones at their cars and beat up some of the kluxers.

Thomas Edison visits an electrical show, drinks “an electrically made cup of coffee,” and predicts that power will some day be transmitted by radio.

Heinrich Schulz (misidentified here as Foerster), one of the right-wing assassins of German former finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1921, was captured in Hungary early this year. Hungary then refused to extradite him to Germany but expels him from the country as an undesirable. He will join the Turkish army, he says. He won’t actually do that, but will go to Spanish Guinea to oversee a plantation, where he’ll get malaria. He’ll return to Germany after Hitler comes to power and join the SS. Captured at the end of the war and questioned at Nuremberg, he’ll be returned to Germany for trial for the assassination. He’ll be convicted for manslaughter and serve 2 years of a 12-year sentence, living as a free man until his death in 1979.

Two Italian planes bomb the Gialo oasis in Libya. This is seen, by the Italians anyway, as a particularly audacious mission, given that the planes had to fly 373 miles to and from Benghazi and a while ago a pilot fell out of his plane in Libya and was eaten by hyenas, as was the custom.

The Texas Supreme Court rules that women, in this case Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, are eligible to hold office.

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Today -100: October 18, 1924: Of monolinguals and table manners

Former ambassador John W. Davis admits at a meeting of Poles in Chicago that he only speaks English.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 17, 1924: The woman idea is here to stay

“Ma” Ferguson, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, says of the nomination of Nellie Taylor Ross for governor of Wyoming in the special election there, “The woman idea is here to stay.”

Matilde Pérez Molla becomes Spain’s first woman mayor, of Cuatretondeta. She is appointed, not elected. The first elected mayor, in 1932, will be María Domínguez Remón in Gallur, who will be killed by Francoists early in the Civil War. They weren’t big on the woman idea.

The ZR-3 zeppelin is supposed to be deflated and the hydrogen with which it crossed the Atlantic replaced with helium, which is a lot safer, but the US doesn’t have enough helium to inflate both the ZR-3 and the Shenandoah, so they may not do that.

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Today -100: October 16, 1924: There is no good in shutting your eyes to the portent of the Third Party movement

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes continues to campaign for Coolidge (and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) by focusing solely on Progressive candidate La Follette while ignoring Democratic candidate Davis. “The Third Party is a dangerous enemy to our form of government,” he says. He says Fightin’ Bob’s plan to give Congress a veto over Supreme Court decisions could lead to “any sort of dictatorship they please.”

Indiana Secretary of State Edward Jackson (R), who is running for governor, has been circulating photographs of Ku Klux Klan records to prove he is a member. As are almost all Republicans running for office in the state. Unclear why Jackson thought people needed reassurance on his klannishness.

The ZR-3 zeppelin completes its 5,000-mile trip from the factory in Germany that built it as part of war reparations to the US in 81 hours, circling New York City 5 times just above the skyscrapers and sailing high over Brooklyn (don’t we all) before landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In Toronto, Prince Edward falls off his horse, as was the custom.

The Wahabis capture Mecca. No “excesses” have been reported.

Headline of the Day -100:  

New York Giants pitcher Walter Huntzinger, not a large vomiting man, although I suppose he could be both.

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Today -100: October 15, 1924: Of salient personages and widows

Sen. Frank B. Brandegee (R-Connecticut), 60, commits suicide by gas inhalation. He was ill and had made some bad real estate speculations. He leaves a note for the servants, along with $200 to divide among 3 of them, warning “beware of the gas.” The NYT says Brandegee “was no mediocrity, but a salient personage.” “‘Reactionaries’ have their value. Especially are they needed now when ‘progressives’ is the only word.”

At an emergency state convention Wyoming Democrats nominate the late governor William Ross’s widow Nellie to replace him.

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Today -100: October 14, 1924: Of cunning plans

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes utters the conspiracy theory that Robert La Follette’s third-party presidential run is actually a plot to make his running mate Charles Bryan president.

The British Tory and Liberal parties come to non-compete agreements in some constituencies to prevent splitting the anti-Labour vote. Tories, for example, will not contest Liberal former PM Asquith’s Paisley (Scotland) seat or Ramsay MacDonald’s Aberavon (Wales) seat, to protect the former and threaten the latter.

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Today -100: October 13, 1924: Of Frances and navigators

Anatole France (born François-Anatole Thibault), Nobel-prize-winning French author, dies at 80.

Buster Keaton’s The Navigator premieres.

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Today -100: October 12, 1924: Coolidge, Then Chaos

Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis says the Coolidge slogan “Coolidge or Chaos” should be “Coolidge, Then Chaos.” In an Indianapolis speech, he talks a lot about Republican corruption and calls the R. record “a vast and unwholesome desert...” - that’s the worst kind of desert – “broken at great intervals by a few oases that Democratic votes were able to create”.

Pres. Coolidge addresses employees of the H. J. Heinz Company, the ketchup people, by radio. He says the public now wants business consolidation where it previously wanted monopolies broken up, because business now realizes that it owes service to the public. Oh, Republicans, aren’t they just adorable?

Coolidge’s secretary, C. Bascom Slemp, a name that will never stop being funny, recently said that Coolidge has “repeatedly” declared that he is not a member of, or in sympathy with, the Klan. One James Deery writes Slemp to ask just when it was that Cal said that. Deery replies refusing to give details but says “His attitude... has long been known to those who are in touch with him”. Slemp himself, by the way, was rumored to be a kluxer and, as congresscritter, led the effort to purge the Virginia Republican Party of black members.

Feminist birth-control activist Dora Russell is standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament for Chelsea, a constituency her husband Bertrand Russell twice failed to win.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 11, 1924: Of blimps blowing up. What more do you need?

Winston Churchill is a Tory now. He is standing for Parliament for Epping (Essex).

Labour has recruited independent MP Oswald Mosley, the future British Union of Fascists leader, to run against Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham. Other Labour candidates include Malcolm MacDonald, son of the prime minister, and Oliver Baldwin, son of the Tory party leader. They will all (Spoiler Alert) lose, but they’ll all get into Parliament later in the decade.

Army blimp TC-2 is destroyed over Newport News, Virginia when one of its bombs explodes, killing 2.

Dr. Henry Fox, a biology professor at Mercer University, a Baptist institution, is asked to resign after it is found that he has been teaching evolution. He will refuse to resign and be fired and replaced with a high school teacher. The university will claim Fox was fired for theological differences rather than his teaching, but c’mon.

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Today -100: October 10, 1924: Of amps, dissolutions, and slush

Members of the United States World War Amps, a delightfully named organization of veteran amputees, and other disabled vets, accuse the Veterans’ Bureau of having been infiltrated by the Klan and discriminating on racial and religious grounds. One thing: were amputees really compensated by the inch?

The dissolution of Parliament is held off until a bill for the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland passes through the Lords, then it’s done and elections set for October 29th. The Tories and the Liberals are expected to make relations with Russia their primary attack issue on Labour. Liberals are rightly worried about their party’s survival.

Progressive presidential candidate Robert La Follette accuses the Republicans of raising a $4 or 5 million slush fund. He believes that the money is coming from the Mellons, J.P. Morgan, etc.

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Today -100: October 9, 1924: Cold and unaffected

So that’s it for Britain’s first Labour government. Parliament votes for the Liberal proposal for an inquiry into the withdrawal of incitement to mutiny charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly. The Labour government had said such a vote would be taken as an issue of confidence and result in the dissolution of Parliament. Every party is blaming every other party for a general election the public doesn’t want, the last one having been less than a year ago and the one before that a bit over a year before.

The pro-Fascist wing of Italy’s Liberal Party is considering breaking away to form a new party which would be ironically called the Constitutional Party. Mussolini’s organ the Popolo d’Italia informs the Libs that “their resolution leaves Mussolini cold and unaffected.”

The home of Powhatan, Ohio Mayor George Boger is bombed. He doesn’t know why.

The Swedish government bans killing eagles. Environmentalists are also working to save the Swedish beaver and European bison (visen). I am happy to report the latter two species – don’t know about the eagles – are doing fine now.

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Today -100: October 8, 1924: Nothing in common with us

The British Labour Party Conference rejects affiliation by the Communist Party of Great Britain and membership of individual Communists. Sez PM Ramsay MacDonald: “Communism as such has nothing in common with us. It is the product of Czarism and the war mentality.” He says the last thing the British people want is another general election but the Liberals are forcing it on them. He’s also not impressed that H.H. Asquith said he’d make the Labour government eat out of his hand.

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon and his brother are intimately involved with the monopolistic Aluminum Company of America  and its efforts to get tariffs on imported aluminum increased. Coolidge hasn’t bothered asking for a copy of the Federal Trade Commission’s report on the company.

The Italian Liberal Party conference ends, without coming to any decision about whether to collaborate with the Fascist government. The party is deeply divided.

Lady Nancy Astor, MP supports a bill to change the marriage laws: “I think it is appalling that a man cannot marry his niece,” she says appalledly.

Ireland names its very first ambassador, Timothy Aloysius Smiddy, who will be Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the US.

On Broadway:

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Today -100: October 7, 1924: Turn your weapons on your oppressors!

The minority Labour government in Britain is facing a Tory censure motion over the withdrawal of charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly, for incitement to mutiny. He called on enlisted military personnel to organize passive resistance against war (“Refuse to shoot down your fellow workers! Refuse to fight for profits! Turn your weapons on your oppressors!”). The Liberals are piling on, proposing a Select Committee to investigate, on which 7 of 10 members would be from the opposition parties. PM Ramsay MacDonald threatens that if either measure passes, there will be new elections. Don’t threaten us with a good time, say Tories & Libs. The opposition parties also object to the proposed treaty with Russia.

Coolidge says “ridding society of the very institution of war... is going to be done because men and women demand it. We are making more progress in this direction than we yet fully realize.”

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Today -100: October 6, 1924: Of controllers, moral codes, and waxworks

A lawsuit is filed (the plaintiff isn’t identified in the article) against the appointment of Walter Cohen as controller of the customs, on the grounds that a black man can’t be a citizen of the United States and the 14th Amendment was never really properly ratified.

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft supports Collier’s attempt to formulate a moral code acceptable to all denominations that can be taught in public schools. He expresses regret that “religion itself” can’t be taught.

Paul Leni’s film Waxworks premieres in Austria.

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Today -100: October 5, 1924: Of klan kluries and world good-wll

Sheriff George Galligan, State’s Attorney Delos Duty, Judge Bowen of Herrin, Illinois, the owner of Herrin Hospital, and 8 others, are indicted for murder during the Klan-Anti-Kluxer gun battle last August. Since the grand jury are mostly kluxers themselves, indictments are not also issued for their hooded brethren.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The world says no.

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Today -100: October 4, 1924: Every tub must stand on its own bottom

Aviation Innovation of the Day -100: A plane is launched from a dirigible.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. says he wants to be considered for the NY governorship on his own merits, not his father’s: “We’ve got a saying in our family that every tub must stand on its own bottom.” All the Roosevelt family sayings are about bathtubs, probably.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sounds legit.

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Today -100: October 3, 1924: Every patriotic American has condemned the Ku Klux Klan but the president of the United States

All 47 League of Nations nations sign on to the compulsory arbitration protocol, or at least to recommend it to their home nations, and to the calling of an arms reduction conference.

China isn’t elected to one of the non-permanent seats on the League Council, so its delegates walk out. But hey, Uruguay got a seat.

William Butler, chair of the RNC, claims that in certain parts of the country the Democrats and La Follette Progressives are conspiring to deadlock the presidential election and throw it into the Congress, which he seems to think would result in Dem. running mate Charles Bryan becoming president (something about electing him vice president and then blocking a vote for president). He says he has evidence of this conspiracy but refuses to disclose it because reasons.

At Madison Square Garden, Dem. presidential candidate John W. Davis talks about the Republicans’ “alibi manufacturing industry,” such as former Sec. of the Interior Albert Fall’s claim that his $100,000 bribe was just a loan and former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr’s alibi that “he was nothing but a messenger boy” in the transfer of the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Interior. Davis takes a crack at the “Silent Cal” thing: Washington wasn’t silent, Lincoln wasn’t silent, “Roosevelt was not silent and the Lord knows Wilson was not silent.”

One of the speakers is Municipal Civil Service Commissioner Ferdinand Morton, not to be mistaken for Jelly Roll Morton. The first black man on the commission, Morton says black people consider the Republican Party faithless to them and are shifting to the Dems, regardless of what the D’s are doing in the South. “Every patriotic American has condemned the Ku Klux Klan but the president of the United States,” he points out.

Wyoming Gov. William Ross dies of complications of an appendectomy. The state doesn’t have lieutenant governors, so the secretary of state will take over until a special election, which will have an interesting result (no spoilers).

The French Academy bans the words “defeatism” and “defeatist.”

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Today -100: October 2, 1924: I choose law

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. gives his acceptance speech for the Republican gubernatorial nomination at Cove Neck, Long Island. He denounces the Ku Klux Klan by name, and also the League of Nations, which he calls “thoroughly un-American” (!). He accuses the Smith administration of an “orgy of extravagance,” which is the worst kind of orgy, or possibly the best kind of orgy. He says Democrats are lying when they say they have the power at the state level to legalize light wines and beers and accuses them of choosing lawlessness re Prohibition. “I choose law,” he says. Despite knowing he’s gonna be attacked on Teapot Dome, he says nothing about it.

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx wants to broaden his government to include both Socialists and Nationalists. He thinks this is a thing that might actually happen, which is just adorbs.

Judge Thayer denies Sacco & Vanzetti’s motions for a new trial, which were based on new evidence, witnesses recanting their testimony, etc.

Leopold n’ Loeb judge John Caverly has a nervous breakdown.

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Today -100: October 1, 1924: Of not being overchoice in the selection of adjectives

The League of Nations, or at least its Arbitration Commission, alters the proposed war-no-more protocol to meet Japan’s objections, allowing nations to ignore the World Court on issues the court considers internal if they have previously submitting the issue to the League.

The special counsel investigating Teapot Dome locates $90,000 in bonds given to then-Interior-Secretary Albert Fall by a Canadian company laundering Sinclair Oil money.

The New Jersey Democratic Party convention will condemn the Klan by name while the Republican Party’s convention plans to ignore it and hope it goes away.

A letter in the NYT from one Morgan Van Woert says his extremely sensitive wife was not offended by “What Price Glory,” because she’s been on an army base before and “men who are engaged in the profession of arms are not overchoice in their selection of adjectives.” And one T. Woodhouse writes that “An adjective of a sanguinary or of a deistic nature need not necessarily make for profanity.”

Albert Einstein might join the faculty of Jerusalem University.

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Today -100: September 30, 1924: Of skyscrapers, ballot access, and kids

After seeing the plans of architect Mario Palanti, Mussolini says he’ll build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Rome, 88 stories & 1,100 feet, which would make it taller than the Eiffel Tower or the Woolworth Building. (This will not, of course, happen.)

The Louisiana secretary of state rejects petitions to put Robert La Follette’s name on the ballot, saying many of the signatures are of people previously registered as Democrats, and they need to all be independents. Even Calvin Coolidge says this is fucked up.

Germany gives a condition for joining the League of Nations: it cannot be required to allow French troops to pass through Germany to assist Poland in war against Russia.

Child actor Jackie Coogan (“The Kid,” “Oliver Twist), who is fronting an Armenian relief group, meets the pope. Tomorrow he’ll meet Mussolini, an experience I’m sure he’ll salt away for future roles:

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Today -100: September 29, 1924: Of internal matters & women congresscritters

At the League of Nations, Japan is demanding that the outlawing-war thing allow for, um, some issues considered by the World Court as internal matters not to be so considered (yeah, I’m being lazy about figuring this out). This is about US anti-Japanese-immigration laws and discrimination against Japanese people in South Africa, Australia and other countries. Japan could stop the disarmament conference happening if it doesn’t get its way.

Alice Paul of the Woman’s Party points out that only 6 states have nominated a woman for Congress (Pennsylvania has nominated 5 and Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Kansas & New Jersey one each). This shows, she says, that it is up to women to organize for women.

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Today -100: September 28, 1924: Of duels, gutter language, awakenings, and fasts

Democrats are delighted that the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt Jr for NY governor lets them pound on the issue of the Teapot Dome scandal, to which he is tangentially linked, doing damage to both TR Jr and the national Republican party.

The notification speech to TR Jr will be given by none other than “Wild Bill” Donovan.

An intra-Fascist duel: Italian Deputy Roberto Farinacci is wounded in a duel with swords with Prince Pignatelli, but not as badly as he will be fishing with hand grenades in the ‘30s. The cause of the duel is unexplained.

Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur criticizes the Maxwell Anderson/Laurence Stalling play “What Price Glory” as “full of gutter language,” which “were characteristic of the old-time sailor before the navy was made clean.”

Douglas MacArthur is promoted to major general at only 44.

In Csonográd, Hungary, seven “Awakening Hungarians” members who threw bombs at a Jewish society event a year ago (that’ll wake you up) are acquitted, the judge claiming that there was insufficient evidence after a confession supposedly obtained by torture is withdrawn.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: September 27, 1924: Of fish in the wintertime

Daylight Saving Time ends tonight -100: don’t forget to stop the pendulums of your clocks for an hour.

The NY Democrat Convention nominates Alfred E. Smith for governor for the 4th time and some other people, all male, for various state offices. The platform says Prohibition is ineffective and isn’t honestly or efficiently enforced and calls for legalizing beer and light wine. “Did you ever pick up a fish in the wintertime in the open air?” Al Smith asks. “I can think of nothing that is as cold and as sticky and as clammy as a fish in the wintertime. If you want to improve upon that sensation, pick up [the Republican] platform and look at it.”

Mother Jones endorses Calvin Coolidge!!!???

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Today -100: September 26, 1924: Inefficiency, Insincerity and Laxity ‘24!

In California, Robert La Follette will have to run on the ticket of the Socialist Party, which is already on the ballot, after the state Supreme Court bars his electors standing on the ballot as independents. La F. assails the court’s 4-3 decision to ignore the 50,000 who signed petitions.

The NY Republican Convention nominates Theodore “Ted” Roosevelt Jr. (age 37) for governor on the first ballot and an honest-to-gosh woman, Florence E. S. Knapp, for secretary of state. It passes the platform plank condemning the Ku Klux Klan by name. The platform denounces Al Smith’s administration for “inefficiency, insincerity and laxity in the conduct of the Government.”

Roosevelt will resign as assistant secretary of the Navy to run for governor. He’s the last of three Roosevelts to hold that post.

The NYT says of TR Jr.’s gubernatorial nomination, “As the son of his father, he was brought forward mainly as a figurehead [for US Sen. James Wadsworth], and a second-choice figurehead at that” after Assembly Speaker H. Edmund Machold pulled out.

After getting the play “What Price Glory”’s language toned down, the cops will now be visiting every Broadway show. It seems that last year the Legislature snuck through some language in a disorderly conduct bill supposedly just dealing with pickpockets that lets the cops interfere with plays whose language they deem offensive. However, the objections by military officials to What Price Glory go beyond language. An official report “attack[s] the play for making the marines swear, drink, quarrel over women and exhibit faulty discipline.” Imagine marines in real life behaving like that! The wearing of military uniforms, which is illegal for civilians, is allowed for plays, but only if they aren’t “discreditable” to the military. The play’s producer, Arthur Hopkins says he’s cut out 3 expressions “that are used in the best families and by our noblest public officials.”

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Today -100: September 25, 1924: By name

The New York state Republican convention’s Committee on Resolutions votes 25 to 24 behind closed doors, and after a long fight, to condemn the Ku Klux Klan by name.

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Today -100: September 24, 1924: Of juniors and prices of glory

Certain elements of the NY Republican Party are lobbying hard against Theodore Roosevelt Jr. being named as nominee for governor. Some object to him as a “wet” (when he was in the Assembly he voted for 2.75% beer), some are worried about his loose connection to Teapot Dome as assistant secretary of the Navy, and some are kluxers, because he once gave a speech denouncing the Klan. State convention fights over the Klan have become rather a theme this year, for both parties.

NY Mayor John Hylan orders the commissioner of licenses to censor Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stalling’s recently opened play about the Great War, “What Price Glory” (which you might know from the 1926 movie version directed by Raoul Walsh or the 1952 John Ford version with Jimmy Cagney) – too much of marines talking like, you know, marines. All that language has been removed from the Cagney film.

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Today -100: September 23, 1924: Of missing links, governors, old colonies, and contemptible conspiracies of fraud and deceit

There is supposedly a tribe of “missing links” in Indonesia. Or possibly monkeys. Either way, the Dutch colonial administration is sending an expedition to find them.

Two days before the NY Republican Convention, itself being held only 6 weeks before the general election, Assembly Speaker H. Edmund Machold, who was expected to win the nomination easily, withdraws from the governor’s race, presumably realizing that Al Smith’s re-entry into the race means he’d be crushed. So... Theodore Roosevelt Jr.?

Women delegates to the convention will push for Florence E. S. Knapp to be nominated for secretary of state.  She’s the only Republican woman candidate for any office in NY.

The German cabinet will decide whether to apply for League of Nations membership. And whether to demand its former colonies back, or at the very least Tanganyika.

The French cabinet omits funding for the embassy at the Vatican from the next budget, reversing the post-war moves towards reconciliation with the Church. This is partly due to the fierce anti-clericalism of the Socialists and Communists and partly due to the Church’s attempts to retain the powers it had in Alsace-Lorraine when it was part of Germany.

Disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty demands that John W. Davis stop talking about him and calls the charges against him “a contemptible conspiracy of fraud and deceit”. Which is the worst kind of conspiracy of fraud and deceit.

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Today -100: September 22, 1924: No courage test, either

Pres. Coolidge speaks to a meeting of the (Catholic) Holy Name Society, which cheers when he says there will be no religious test for holding office, which the audience “apparently interpreted... as a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.” He makes, of course, no actual reference to the Klan.

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Today -100: September 21, 1924: When war is outlawed, only criminals will have wars

Headline of the Day -100:  

NYC Mayor John Hylan pulls out of the race for governor, knowing that Al Smith would crush him.

William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette will run for governor of Kansas an an independent, “this distateful [sic] but necessary task,” as part of his long-time campaign against the Klan. The NYT honors the editor by that typo, I assume. Republican candidate Ben Paulen, White says, accepted Klan support & prevented an anti-Klan plank, “degrading my party and allying it with the forces of ignorance and terror,” while Democratic candidate Jonathan Davis refuses to disavow the Klan.

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Today -100: September 20, 1924: Alfred E. is back-ee

Al Smith will accept the nomination for another term as NY governor after all (the D. state convention is next week; I’d forgotten how close to the general election they wait before picking a nominee).

Russia will create two new central Asian republics in an attempt to reduce ethnic tensions: Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Composer Giacomo Puccini is named to the Italian Senate.

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Today -100: September 19, 1924: Of fasts and secretaries

Gandhi begins a 21-day fast to protest Hindu-Muslim violence.

The Klan endorses T. Frank Appleby for the Republican nomination for Congress in New Jersey’s 3rd district after rival Maj. Stanley Washburn refuses their demand that he fire his Catholic secretary.

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Today -100: September 18, 1924: Of caravans, mutinies, and klans

The Coolidge campaign, which by the way includes an alliterative “Coolidge caravan” of speakers, is mostly ignoring John W. Davis and pretending Cal’s only real opponent is Progressive Fightin’ Bob La Follette. I guess there’s not much traction to be gained in attacking Davis, who lacks a, you know, personality, and whose most recent public jobs were solicitor general and ambassador to Britain. Also, there’s some worry that Coolidge might fail to win a majority in the Electoral College, throwing the election into the House where La Follette has friends but Davis might win.

5 black former soldiers serving life sentences for the Camp Logan, Houston “mutiny” of 1917, in which soldiers protested racist violence by the Houston PD, are paroled.

The New Mexico Democratic convention adopts a plank specifically condemning the Ku Klux Klan.

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Today -100: September 17, 1924: Silence

 

Headline of the Day -100:  

 

But not with the NAACP, whose secretary James Weldon Johnson points out in a letter to Coolidge that he seems to have forgotten to make a statement disavowing Klan support. Funny that. He warns that black voters will vote against candidates, even Republicans, backed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Presidential candidate John W. Davis has to wear his arm in a sling because of all that hand-shaking at the farm of a Dr. Arthur Nelson in Bunceton, Missouri. The mass of hand-shakees also raided the kitchen, taking all the food intended for Davis and Dr. Nelson’s family.

30 klansmen enter the African M.E. Church in Galesburg, Illinois during a fund-raising social to donate $65. The church gives it back.

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Today -100: September 16, 1924: Lock them up! Lock them up!

Sen. Burton Wheeler promises that the La Follette-Wheeler administration will send corrupt Republican officials to prison. He says the “grafting by the Ohio gang and by those thieves who infested Washington during the last four years was the direct result of the system by which presidents are nominated by conventions of corrupt politicians and corrupt business men,” which can only be remedied by direct primary elections.

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Today -100: September 15, 1924: Of war criminals, Daimlers, devil’s islands, and straw

For the first time, the French have been able to lay their hands on a German “war criminal,” Peter Lohmann, who as a stretcher-bearer in 1914 supposedly killed a French soldier. He’s from Lorraine, so he’s now French.

There’s some fuss over British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald accepting a gift of an automobile, a Daimler no less, and some stock to pay for its upkeep, from digestive biscuit tycoon Sir Alexander Grant, a childhood friend who MacDonald gave a baronetcy.

France says it is closing Devil’s Island prison, the South American hellhole where Dreyfus was incarcerated. Actually, it won’t be closed until 1953.

Coolidge wins a straw vote conducted by the Yonkers Record. To be fair, if straw could vote, it would definitely vote for Coolidge.

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Today -100: September 14, 1924: Replaced by the vendetta

John W. Davis attacks Republican tariffs, suggesting the repeated increase on the duty on imported aluminum is down to high officials having US Aluminum Company stock.

The NYT on the retaliatory assassination of Fascist Deputy Armando Casalini: “One of the principal purposes of the Fascist uprising was to substitute patriotic efficiency for a decrepit and discredited parliamentarism. It now remains to be seen whether parliamentarism, in part at least, has not been replaced by the vendetta.”

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Today -100: September 13, 1924: Down with shame!

Armando Casalini, a Fascist deputy, is assassinated on a Rome trolley by three shots from carpenter Giovanni Corvi to avenge the murder of “my brother in idealism” Giacomo Matteotti. The Fascist Party forbids reprisals, at least officially. Corvi will be put in a mental hospital (he probably wasn’t insane but I guess that avoids a public trial), then sent to the gulag on the Tremiti Islands. He was killed by the Germans in 1944.

A plan is being worked out for France to pay off its war debt to the US by oh, say, 1991.

The French Academy bans the use of the English word “cocktail.”

It’s Defense Day all over the US. Parades and mock battles and cosplay. It’s supposed to demonstrate... something.

The NYT advises Coolidge not to take up the many offers to go on a speaking tour, because his oratorical skills suuuuuuck: “His presence is not commanding and his speeches are not moving.”

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Little detail about what this is about, but these are “several young athletes of both sexes,” not entirely nude, with ribbons reading “Down with shame!”

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Today -100: September 12, 1924: Klandidates

Klan-backed candidates (indeed, Klan members) win the Colorado Republican primaries for governor (Clarence Morley) and US senator (Rice Means). Both will (Spoiler Alert) win the general election. Morley will be a notably bigoted governor, even by 1920s standards; later he’ll go into 1) the mail fraud business, 2) Leavenworth.

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Today -100: September 11, 1924: Let them now be obliterated from the sight and thoughts of all wholesome-minded men and women

Justice John Caverly sentences Leopold n’ Loeb to life imprisonment +99 years, sparing them hanging on account of their age and “the progress of criminal law all over the world and... the dictates of enlightened humanity.” So the judge is simply disregarding all the questionable but no doubt expensive psychiatric testimony put up by the defense. Says the NYT: “Let them now be obliterated from the sight and thoughts of all wholesome-minded men and women.” Loeb will be shanked in the prison shower room in 1936. Leopold will be released in 1958 and become a medical technician in Puerto Rico and then teach at the University of Puerto Rico, dying in 1966.

The US lands 100 sailors in Ceiba, Honduras, to protect the consulate. There’s a little rebellion going on.

The Missouri Democratic Party adopts an anti-Klan plank.

The Chilean Congress (Parliament? whatever) gives Pres. Arturo Alessandri a 6-month “leave of absence” as he flees the county for Argentina. Oddly, after one or two more coups, he will actually return in 6 months and resume power.

Texas lawyer Charles Dickson files suit to keep Miriam “Ma” Ferguson’s name off the Texas ballot for governor, arguing that her husband James is the real candidate and he is barred from holding state office again by his impeachment. Dickson also argues that women can’t hold office and the governorship in particular, since the governor is commander-in-chief of the militia and the militia is composed of “able bodied male citizens.”

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Today -100: September 10, 1924: Cut out the Klan

Since the Republicans did so well in the Maine elections after pretending that their being backed by the Ku Klux Klan wasn’t even an issue and that the election was really about backing Coolidge, it is thought that Coolidge, who was delaying making some sort of statement about the Klan until after Maine voted, will now continue to refuse to engage with the Klan issue. The Washington Post takes from the Maine election the lesson that everyone should “cut out the Klan,” that is, stop picking on it.

After a military takeover of the Chilean government, President Arturo Alessandri resigns and hides out in the US Embassy, but the Senate refuses to accept his resignation.

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Today -100: September 9, 1924: Of groundswells

Reacting to the Chinese civil war, the US, Britain, Italy and Japan land forces in Shanghai to defend their nationals.

In the Maine general elections, Republicans win the Senate seat and all 4 House seats, with Ralph Brewster elected governor. The Democratic campaign against him focused on his Klan backing.

The German cabinet discusses whether to officially inform other nations of Chancellor Wilhelm Marx’s repudiation of the war guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty.

Robert La Follette says Progressives are now even with Republicans. Evidently there’s a groundswell.

Coleman Blease will win today’s South Carolina Democratic primary for the US Senate (and – Spoiler Alert) the general election. Blease was this blog’s frenemy back when he was governor (1911-15), so a quick recap of some of the highlights of his record is in order. Blease supported lynching (“where black men commit crimes against white women, and are lynched for it, I declare Constitutions do not apply. For that, there is a higher law than the Constitution”). He opposed black people going to school, and opposed the drinking of Coca-Cola. He revoked the licenses of 3 notary publics who supported the accusation by a railroad ticket agent that he tried to cut in line and got abusive when she refused to let him. He sold pardons but also pardoned thousands for capricious reasons such as “he has the same name as my childhood friend,” almost emptying the state prisons before he left office. He opposed medical inspection of school children and promised to pardon any father who killed a doctor who tried to examine his daughter.

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Today -100: September 8, 1924: Of endorsements, rallies, and, um, bonds

Not surprisingly, Thomas Edison endorses Coolidge.

Responding to Wisconsin Gov. John Blaine’s declaration of war on the Ku Klux Klan, it calls for a rally in Capitol Square on the 23rd. At night in hoods and sheets, natch.

NOT OK, New York Times, NOT OK:  

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Today -100: September 7, 1924: On remaining American

Coolidge attacks (although not by name) Robert La Follette: “The question is whether America will allow itself to be degraded into a communistic or socialistic state or whether it will remain American.”

The Earl of Cromer, who as Lord Chamberlain is Britain’s theatre censor, licenses George Bernard Shaw’s “problem” play about prostitution, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, after 30 years of lords chancellor refusing to do so. There were private performances in London in 1902, and it played on Broadway in 1905, only to be raided by the police.

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Today -100: September 6, 1924: Of common honesty and temples of peace

John W. Davis tells a Rockford, Illinois audience that he will bring “a government of common honesty.” Which would certainly have been an interesting experiment, having never been tried.

French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot responding to Ramsay MacDonald at the League of Nations, says arbitration is necessary but not sufficient. “Arbitration, security and disarmament are three pillars of the temple of peace you are building here, and if that temple is to rise the foundations must be solid.”

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Today -100: September 5, 1924: Pacts or no pacts, you will be devastated

At the League of Nations conference on disarmament in Geneva, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says military alliances (France’s policy) won’t bring security. Only a system of arbitration will, and without one there won’t be disarmament. Or peace. He wants Germany in the League and the US and who knows maybe even Russia some day. He tells small nations, presumably those allied to France in the Little Entente: “In a military world, pacts or no pacts, you will be invaded; pacts or no pacts, you will be devastated.”

Italy denies that anyone tried to assassinate Mussolini, saying yesterday’s report was a “Bourse maneuver.”

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Today -100: September 4, 1924: A corncob pipe in every garage

Someone tries to assassinate Mussolini but hits the car behind his instead. No one is hurt.

They’re really going to report every single thing the Prince of Wales does in America, aren’t they? Anyway, he’s playing polo and shit.

Civil war breaks out in China, as was the custom. Izvhestia blames American capital and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes.

Vice presidential nominee Charles Bryan adopts as his symbol the corncob pipe because the Democratic team is just that exciting.

The Texas Democratic Convention adopts a platform denouncing the Ku Klux Klan as “undemocratic, un-Christian and un-American,” although the word “treason” is dropped from the draft. It calls for registering the names of the membership of such organizations and for a law against masks.

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Today -100: September 3, 1924: The only issue

William Pattangall, the Democratic candidate for governor of Maine, says the Ku Klux Klan is the only issue in the Maine campaign. He says Coolidge won’t dare denounce the Klan until after the Maine election – which is next week. Republican candidate Ralph Owen Brewster is very much Klan-backed.

The Texas Democrat Convention is purged of Klan delegates.

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Today -100: September 2, 1924: The Delos Duty sounds like a paperback in a crap series of Robert Ludlum ripoffs

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes rebuffs a League of Nations request for the US to send a rep to the committee drafting a treaty to control the arms traffic, but it will send reps to any conference to consider the plan.

On Labor Day, Prez. Coolidge tells union leaders in the White House (whose expenses might have been paid by the RNC) that immigration restriction and protective tariffs are the best policies for labor and will “prevent America from producing cheap men.” Republicans are running a little scared of labor defecting to what Coolidge calls the radicalism and paternalism of Robert La Follette.

John Davis, addressing union members in Wheeling, West Virginia, calls for: the anti-child-labor amendment to the US Constitution, abolition of the Railroad Labor Board, and limiting anti-strike injunctions.

A bomb is discovered in Lenin’s tomb. Student groups had visited the tomb, so the Cheka tortures false confessions out of many, many students, as is the custom.

Herrin, Illinois Sheriff George Galligan is arrested by the coroner (I didn’t know they could do that), along with 2 of his deputies, for allegedly starting the gun fight with the Klan that resulted in 6 deaths. There are warrants out, not yet served, on a judge and State’s Attorney Delos Duty. The gloriously and alliteratively named Duty thinks the general in charge of the troops sent into Herrin and the governor himself are secret klansmen. Also every preacher in Williamson County.

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Today -100: September 1, 1924: Of defectives and princes

Secretary of War John Weeks says half the population is “subnormal” and/or “defective,” which means the US will have to “defend itself with one arm tied behind its back.” He wants children inspected so the next generation is better, but I’m unclear on what he’s suggesting be done.

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Today -100: August 31, 1924: As I go in, the Klan will go out

Emma Goldman gets permission to move to Britain from Berlin.

In the latest shenanigans in Herrin, Illinois, Sheriff George Galligan and his deputies get into a gun battle with Klansmen, then barricade themselves in Herrin Hospital, while the kluxers occupy city hall, possibly with a machine gun. The sheriff telegraphs Springfield calling for state troops. 6 dead so far.

I guess we know the German Nationalists’ demand for passing the railroad part of the Dawes Plan: Chancellor Wilhelm Marx disavows the war guilt clause of the Versailles Treaty. France is (spoiler alert) pissed.

Future Texas governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson tells the NYT that the main issue of the election is the Ku Klux Klan. She won’t hire any kluxers for state offices: “As I go in, the Klan will go out.”

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Today -100: August 30, 1924: Dawes done

The German Reichstag passes the Railroad bill required to implement the Dawes Plan after days of fighting by Nationalist and Communist deputies. Many of the former gave in, presumably not wanting to face a new election or having been bribed in some way.

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Today -100: August 29, 1924: The last supreme shock of the world

Nathan Leopold promises that if he is executed his last words will be “the last supreme shock of the world.” “I really think I can make it worth any one’s while who is fortunate enough to obtain an invitation.” Also, there’ll be hard punch and a good jazz band. Dickie Loeb plans to play in the jail baseball league.

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Today -100: August 28, 1924: Cities are doomed

After NY Gov. Al Smith meets with new Tammany boss George Washington Olvany, the latter says Smith is definitely not running for re-election, leaving the Dems without an obvious replacement. Smith wants FDR to run, but FDR is ruling himself out on health grounds.

The South Carolina Democratic primary fails to produce a majority winner for the US Senate race, so there will have to be a second primary next month (shouldn’t that be called a secondary?) between ex-Gov. Coleman Blease and Rep. James Byrnes.

Coolidge has decided on the subjects on which he will run: common-sense farm relief, unofficial cooperation in Europe without political “engagements,” and, of course, tax cuts.

The Idaho Democratic convention condemns the Klan.

Marcus Garvey says the black people he intended to settle in Liberia will now go instead to... some other African country tbd. He says Britain, France, and Firestone Tire and Rubber Company forced Liberia to say it didn’t want the immigrants.

Henry Ford says cities will eventually vanish and industry and population be decentralized. Cities are simply too expensive to be maintained. Farmers will work in these factories during the dull season.

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Today -100: August 27, 1924: What do we care about that, anyway?

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Evidently the “Ku Klux Klan issue” is a real head-scratcher for Cal.

The Ohio Democratic convention condemns the Klan.

The Oklahoma Democratic party also opposes the Klan, but Republican Sen. John Harreld says klansmen are welcome in his party. “What do we care about that, anyway?” Gov. M.E. Trapp (D) says the KKK controls the R. party in the southwest. Oh sure, some kluxers are Democrats, he says, but they’re taking orders from Grand Dragons who are Republicans.

State’s Attorney Robert Crowe sums up: Leopold n’ Loeb are perverts, rattlesnakes, mad dogs, etc. He also has insults for the defense psychiatrists and Clarence Darrow.

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