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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