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.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

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.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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