Today -100: August 31, 1925: Of great excitement and bringing the priesthood into disrepute

There are anti-Chinese outbreaks all over Mexico, including the kidnapping of 40 in Sonora, “causing great excitement among the yellow race.” Will there be a follow-up on the kidnapping? I suspect not.

Lithuania bans George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” for being “irreligious and calculated to bring the priesthood into disrepute.” Reminds me of the movie “The Sound of Music” being banned in the 1970s in at least one Latin American country run by a military junta (Argentina? Chile?) for bringing the military into disrepute.

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Today -100: August 30, 1925: Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable

Germany, wanting to join the League of Nations but worried about incurring military obligations given that it has basically no (official) military, will ask to have the same exemptions the League grants neutral Switzerland.

Col. Billy Mitchell, who was forced out of the Army Air Service, says the government is refusing to allow him to test a super-airplane capable of flying non-stop from the US to Paris carrying a ton of explosives. “Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable,” he says. Officers in the Air Service say they don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

William Stoddard, author of over 100 books and assistant private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, dies at 89.

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Today -100: August 29, 1925: Of fighters

NYC Mayor John Hylan responds to Gov. Alfred E. Smith, denying his accusation that he negotiated with the Klan at the 1924 Democratic Convention. Hylan says he’s a fighter. Smith retorts, sure, ‘cuz he fights with fucking EVERYONE. He says Hylan doesn’t understand his grade-elimination program in Queens.

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Today -100: August 28, 1925: Of coal and secret conferences

Anthracite coal miners will begin a major strike Monday. 

In a speech in Brooklyn, New York Gov. Al Smith accuses NYC Mayor John Hylan of having been “in secret conference with the Klan, with the representative of the Klan” during the 1924 Democratic Convention. I gather by that he means William Gibbs McAdoo.

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Today -100: August 27, 1925: Of souls, radio teas, hooting, dwarfs, and wouldn’t it be cool if there actually were a baseball team called the Cads?

Prof. Charles Henry of the Sorbonne says he has proof that humans have a soul that survives death.

Carrie Chapman Catt’s speech on the 5th anniversary of the 19th Amendment (women’s activism is all about abolishing war now, she says) is broadcast on WEAF radio. In Westchester County, there are maybe 100 “radio teas” where women gather to listen to the speech.

At the World Zionist Congress, a call for a Jewish army in Palestine provokes anti-militarist “violent hooting” and militarist “counter-hooting.”

The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition next year will feature “the largest collection of dwarfs ever assembled.” The article (for which there seems to be no link) fails to explain why dwarfs are required. Was Philadelphia originally founded by dwarfs? That would explain a lot, probably. 

That’s “dwarfs,” by the way. The plural “dwarves” was coined by J.R. Tolkein to distinguish his characters from Disney’s Snow White dwarfs.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 26, 1925: Of devoted mothers, motorless flying machines, tongs, and watermelons

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson denies New York’s extradition request for Virginia Canaday, who kidnapped her son Roscoe Jr. from her ex-husband last month and fled the state. Ferguson calls Ms. Canaday a “devoted mother.” The ex kidnapped his kid from San Antonio first, back in April, removing him to Forest Hills, Long Island. There’s also a daughter, but no one seems to be mentioning her. I think she’s still with her father.

Inventor Alphonse Dube commits suicide by hanging himself after years of failing to get a motorless flying machine to work. And by “motorless flying machine,” I mean wings. That he flapped. Broke his leg last time he tried it.

A gang war between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong erupts in shootings in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, St Louis and Minneapolis, despite the fact that “Hip Sing Tong” is objectively fun to say out loud. Do it now.

A farmer sends Pres. Coolidge a 100-pound watermelon.

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Today -100: August 25, 1925: Of unheard-of impudence and charlestons

At the World Zionist Congress in Vienna, Hungarian delegate Dr. Kahan points out that Hungary is the only country besides Russia where it is illegal to belong to a Zionist organization.

US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, responding to a complaint by a Zionist organization against the violence in Vienna directed at that Congress, passed on the complaint to the Austrian government (er, maybe). The Hakenkreuzler (Austrian Nazis) newspaper Deutschösterrichische Tageszeitung attacks Kellogg’s “unheard-of impudence”: “As a private person he may serve his beloved Jews as much as he likes, but as Secretary of State it is none of his concern if the native population of Vienna thinks about the Jews differently from him.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 24, 1925: Of non-engagement

Well, in the absence of any interesting substantive news today -100, let’s go with Royal Rumours™! Prince Henry of Britain, 25, the third son of King George, is reportedly (“again”) engaged to Lady Mary Scott, 21, daughter of the Duke & Duchess of Buccleuch. “If the rumors turn out to be correct, the engagement will be very popular.” They aren’t.

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Today -100: August 23, 1925: Of kluxers and racialists

Pres. Coolidge appoints M.O. Dunning, the paid lobbyist of the Ku Klux Klan, as collector of the port of Savannah, Georgia.

In Vienna, 20,000 “racialists,” many of them veterans in uniform and Hakenkreuzler in “‘Hitler’ shirts,” whatever those might be, hold a protest demonstration against the World Zionist Congress.

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Today -100: August 22, 1925: Metaphor of the Day -100

New York City is undergoing an unusually large mosquito invasion this year, including City Hall, where they’re breeding in the pools around the statue of Civic Virtue.

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Today -100: August 21, 1925: A seat, not a strap

Trying again to defang NYC Mayor Hylan’s main issue, Jimmy Walker says he is not only in favor of the 5¢ car fare, but “I’m for the five-cent fare with a seat, and not for the five-cent fare with a strap.”

Musical... Comedy? ... of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 20, 1925: A man usually carries a gun for a purpose

NY Gov. Al Smith says people shouldn’t carry guns: “I have walked in the lower sections of New York for years and have never felt the need of a weapon. A man usually carries a gun for a purpose.”

One Walter White suggests, in a letter to the NYT, that NYC reduce traffic fatalities by adopting a system he saw in practice in Mobile, Alabama in which pedestrians as well as vehicles are required to obey traffic lights. Mr. White don’t know New Yorkers very well, do he?

The leopard Zizi who escaped into the Bois de Boulogne and wandered the park for 3 days, gets into the courtyard of a nearby school and is shot dead. Fuck.

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Today -100: August 19, 1925: Of debt, anti-Semites, and segregation

Belgium agrees to pay back its war & reconstruction debt to the US over 62 years.

The Hakenkreuzler rioting against the World Zionist Congress in Vienna has caused $4 million in damage.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals recently, I guess, declared zoning laws enforcing racial segregation illegal. Also illegal: a white mob in “fine old residential sections of Baltimore” attack a black family who are trying to move into a house they just leased, as well as the white man who owns the house, who now says he’ll refund the family’s money and not lease it to black folks.

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Today -100: August 18, 1925: Mass cannot govern mass

Anti-Semites attack the Freiheit Platz in Vienna where the 14th World Zionist Congress has convened. The police are holding them back.

Mussolini tells the Daily Press, “mass cannot govern mass; quantity cannot govern quantity.” Also, “there can be no such thing as liberty, which exists but in the imagination of philosophers who seek their unpractical philosophy from the skies... Is there such a thing as liberty? Civilization is the inverse of personal liberty.”  Also, too, “Julius Caesar is my ideal”.

Headline of the Day -100:

A couple of days ago a leopard escaped the Paris zoological gardens into the Bois de Boulogne, “rendering its beautiful nooks and paths unsuitable to lovers for moonlight strolls.” Cops pursue her on horses, bicycles and elephants, as was the custom. The leopard’s name is Zizi, because of course it is.

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Today -100: August 17, 1925: Of subs and Joisey Fashis

John Scopes, who resigned from Dayton’s High School after the Monkey Trial, will be replaced by someone who rejoices in the name Raleigh Valentine Reece, who does not believe in evolution. His brother is a member of Congress.

A meeting in Newark of Italians opposed to Fascism is invaded by the Fascisti League. A fight ensued involving stilettos and razors, with six stabbings, as was the custom. The Fascists claim to have gone to the meeting unarmed.

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Today -100: August 16, 1925: Of divorced Communists

To increase the number of women Communist agitators in Norway, male Norwegian Communists are marrying in Moscow (it is unclear if their new wives are Russian or Norwegian), and then divorcing them in Oslo, because divorcees in Norway don’t lose their citizenship and can’t be deported. The husbands then return to Moscow, rinse and repeat.

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Today -100: August 15, 1925: Of public praying and traffic lanes

Headline of the Day -100:

Striking (or locked-out) coal miners in Henryetta, Oklahoma, who had been ordered by the sheriff to stop praying near scabs, presumably intending to intimidate them. The ACLU is looking into it.

A letter to the Times suggests reducing traffic accidents by marking out lanes in the larger roads.

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Today -100: August 14, 1925: Of private citizens and divorces

New York Democratic Gov. Al Smith will fight to defeat New York City Democratic Mayor John Hylan by speechifying in favor of fellow Tammanyist Jimmy Walker, although he will do so as a private citizen rather than as governor, whatever that means.

Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk divorces his wife of 2½ years, Latife Hanoum. No legal procedure, just a decree, which he issues as a president rather than as a private citizen. The Western-educated (Paris & London) Latife is just too feminist for him. Or he was too much of a dick for her; neither of them ever spoke publicly about the divorce.

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Today -100: August 13, 1925: Of highly civilized nations and petting parties

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann says that when Germany enters the League of Nations, it will insist on getting back some of its former colonies now ruled as League “mandates” by Britain, France, etc. He refers to the “right of Germany to have colonies,” asserting that “as long as the League distributed colonies on the principle that the highly civilized nations had the right to control the less progressive peoples, Germany demanded the right to be counted among the civilized nations.”

The University of California, Berkeley informs incoming women freshmen against frivolities such as wearing too much rouge and lipstick, returning from dances after 1 a.m., smoking, drinking, petting parties, etc.

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Today -100: August 12, 1925: Of the occult, klux fights, and dewws alCWA

Austria bans societies engaged in the study of the occult (spiritualism, if I’m reading this correctly).

16 KKKers are charged with assault with dangerous weapons in Framingham, Massachusetts after a clash with anti-kluxers at a Klan meeting.

Former slave Eliza Hicks dies at 100. She leaves (deep breath) 7 living children out of 14, 80 grandchildren, 134 great-grandchildren, and 8 great-great-grandchildren.

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Today -100: August 11, 1925: Of tickets

The three tickets for New York City offices – mayor, controller, president of the Board of Alderman – are chosen, with the Democratic ticket headed by John Hylan, a Tammany Democratic ticket headed by Jimmy Walker, and a Republican one headed by... well, it hardly matters, does it? He’s some dude in the fountain pen business.

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Today -100: August 10, 1925: The day of oratory is past

William Butler Yates says “The day of oratory is past, not only in Ireland but everywhere in the modern world.” He says that in the absence of decent speech-making, it will be the job of the Abbey Theatre (Dublin) to teach clarity of expression.

William Green, president of the AFL, warns black union members not to attend the American Negro Labor Congress organized by the (Communist) Workers’ Party: “It will not be held to benefit the race but to instill into the lives of that race the most pernicious doctrine – race hatred.”

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Today -100: August 9, 1925: Of marching kluxers and huge gorillas, but I repeat myself

35-40,000 Klansman from all over... well, from the North-East, mostly, march through Washington D.C. (the parade had a permit, it’s not a March on Rome thing) from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. They do not wear masks, in compliance with a D.C. ordinance. Many do hold their arms out in evident imitation of the Italian Fascist “Roman salute.” It rains at the end, so no giant-cross burning.

Some British Pathé footage of the parade.

By the way, after William Jennings Bryan’s death, some Klan chapters celebrated him, under the impression he was a member.

British Air Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare will fly over the North Sea in one of the secret flying boats being developed.

The NYT likes the Tod Browning / Lon Chaney film “The Unholy Three”: “Think of having such a combination as a midget, a strong man and a ventriloquist! ... There is also a huge gorilla that figures in this picture, and even the way in which this animal is employed makes a wonderful cog in the story.” Rewatching it recently I was surprised how good Mae Busch was; I mostly remember her from her multiple roles as the one-note wife of Oliver Hardy, was. The “midget” who disguised himself as an infant was Harry Earles, 22 or 23, who was also in the sound remake, “Freaks,” and “the Wizard of Oz,” but mostly worked in circuses with his 3 diminutive siblings.

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Today -100: August 8, 1925: Of beebs, right arms, and lynchings

Rudyard Kipling joins a committee of inquiry into the future of British radio broadcasting after the British Broadcasting Company’s monopoly expires next year. Does that strike anyone else as incongruous? He’s only 59, but wireless just feels a bit futuristic for him. The article doesn’t say how many people are on the committee, but it includes just one (1) woman, Meriel Talbot, former director of the Women’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Jimmy Walker cuts the legs out from under NYC Mayor John Hylan’s main issue, saying he (Walker) has fought for the 5¢ fare for years and “would rather cut off his right arm” than increase it.

Former Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando resigns from the Chamber of Deputies, in protest at the Fascist tactics during the Palermo elections.

A mob of 1,000 people lynch a black man in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. The lynching could be seen from a train.

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Today -100: August 7, 1925: Slow news day

Mayor Lawrence Quigley of Chelsea, Massachusetts is arrested, along with 43 others, for conspiracy to violate Prohibition.

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Today -100: August 6, 1925: Of traffic peerages, walkers, and cities wicked and reckless of life

Tammany Hall decides to run State Sen. Jimmy Walker against John Hylan in the Dem. mayoral primary. Now if they can just keep him out of the speakeasies. Gov. Al Smith has been quiet on the intramural squabble thus far, although it’s no secret that he haaaaates Hylan.

A few days after the Grand Jury said it would question NYPD Commissioner Richard Enright on the “PD” signs he’s been handing out for display in the cars of a “traffic peerage” of prominent people who are not members of the PD, making them immune to traffic-law enforcement, the police, following Mayor Hylan’s order, ask for the signs to be returned.

A mere 60 years after Elizabeth Garrett became the first woman given a licence to practice medicine in Britain through a loophole that allowed her to join the Society of Apothecaries, the Royal College of Surgeons will admit women, with voting rights and everything.

Chicago Mayor William Dever asks Chicagohoovians to help dispel the “apparently general impression that our city is wicked and reckless of life.” For example, the newspapers reported that there have been 227 murders this year, when there were actually only 112, not counting all the times cops shot alleged criminals. I don’t think that’s as reassuring as he thinks it is.

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Today -100: August 5, 1925: They are waiting, and so am I

NYC Mayor John Hylan is urged by his biggest fan, Henry Fruhauf of the Hylan Five-Cent Fare Club, to remain in the mayoral race even if he loses the Democratic primary, since politicians can control the primary but not the general election, and yes I’m mostly reporting this for the name of that “club.” Hylan really has no other issue than the 5¢ thing (that said, as I write this, before the 2025 mayoral primaries, Zohran Mamdani is campaigning on making the buses free, just like the Staten Island ferry, but he does have other issues).

Ex-kaiser Wilhelm tells a Budapest newspaper, “The so-called democracy of today means death to the nation. It is an inadequate form of government, and the people within their hearts prefer the monarchy, or one-man rule. I trust in the character and fidelity of the German people. They are waiting, and so am I.”

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Today -100: August 4, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

Greece is threatening war against Bulgaria. Ahead of a scheduled mutual ethnic cleansing in October, Greeks in Bulgaria are being killed, Greece says, in order to force Greeks to flee so their property can be grabbed.

US marines end their 13-year occupation of Nicaragua, except for 4 who desert to stay with their Nicaraguan wives.

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Today -100: August 3, 1925: Of concentration camps and anniversaries

Those ethnic Germans deported from Poland are currently quartered in the decrepit Schneidemühl concentration camp. It was a World War I prisoner of war camp, but I was a bit startled to see “concentration camp,” a term I thought hadn’t yet migrated to German from English, where it was coined for the Boer War.

Coolidge has been president for two years.

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Today -100: August 2, 1925: The word “undesirable” was just sitting there

Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” is banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain, who calls it “abhorrent.”

Count Antonio Cippico, Italian Fascist senator and Italian delegate to the League of Nations, says Fascism is “remolding the national soul of the Italians by severe discipline.” He says Italy’s territory is “insufficient to support her people,” so it requires either new colonies (its “share” of Germany’s former colonies) or for its emigrants need to live in other countries as groups and without losing their Italian citizenship.

Spain has its first ever divorce, that of the Baron and Baroness de Valasco.

There are something like 100,000 refrigerators in homes in the US.

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Today -100: August 1, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

The expulsion of Poles from Germany and Germans from Poland is happening. The Poles are mostly miners who lived in the Ruhr and have been sent to Silesia, which already has all miners it needs. The ethnic Germans are mostly farmers who lived in German Poland for generations and don’t speak German.

The French occupation of the Ruhr ends after 2½ years. German airplanes will again be allowed to fly over the Ruhr, and Ruhrihoovians will be allowed to own radios.

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