Today -100: May 24, 1926: Of mysteries, chivalrous coups, and servant shortages

Divers search off the coast of Santa Monica for the body of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, 35, who disappeared last week.

Marshal Piłsudski says the “civil war” in Poland, which is what he calls his coup, was “quite chivalrous”; soldiers often stopped shooting at each other to let children and little old ladies cross the road. But some officers aren’t very forgiving and there will probably be a few duels.

Former suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst (not “Miss Pankhurst,” NYT), continuing her move rightwards, says that if a secret ballot had been taken of miners’ wives, there would never have been a strike.

Oh non! France has a servant shortage. And the Poor Law Dept won’t even let rich Parisians take young orphan girls, saying it would no longer be able to exercise supervision over their welfare. But what about the welfare of rich Parisians? WHAT ABOUT THE WELFARE OF RICH PARISIANS??!!

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Today -100: May 23, 1926: Hazard by name...

Dry Tsar Lincoln Andrews says he’ll try out naming state officials as federal Prohibition agents in California, in accordance with that Coolidge executive order, as a test run. Only in California and only in rural counties and only deputy sheriffs. Sounds like the Coolidge Admin. is backing down.

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson suggests that if she wins the Democratic gubernatorial primary in July by 25,000 votes, her opponent, Dan Moody, immediately resign as attorney general, but if he wins by a single vote, she’ll resign as governor.  (Update: he accepts).

Kentucky National Guard troops armed with machine guns guard the county jail in Hazard to prevent the lynching of a 17-year-old black youth who killed a constable.

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Today -100: May 22, 1926: On the other hand, if they use a trumpet *while* writing on a slate, that would be pretty impressive

Coolidge issues an executive order allowing state, county, and municipal officers to get dual authority as federal officers (for “a nominal rate of compensation,” maybe $1 a year) with the power to cross state and county lines to enforce Prohibition laws, including in the states – New York, Maryland and Nevada – which have no prohibition enforcement laws. New York has a law which strips the salaries of state officers taking a federal appointment. This executive order reverses one issued by Grant in 1873 forbidding executive branch employees holding state offices. Much outrage is expressed, including from dry members of both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee, on constitutional grounds (Grant’s EO was more about keeping the graft down to a dull roar). Sen. William Bruce (D-Maryland) points out that just last week Coolidge was championing states’ rights and saying that “No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction and decline.” Sen. Edwin Broussard (D-Louisiana) says compulsory enforcement in communities opposed to Prohibition is just like the Northern attitude during Reconstruction: “The president is merely invoking the policy of the North against the South with reference to slavery.” Maybe not as compelling an argument as he thinks it is.

Józef Piłsudski now says he’ll graciously permit the National Assembly to elect him president of Poland, although he claims “I don’t care to be elected president unless it is proved beyond a doubt that the great mass of the Polish people are behind me,” because nothing says I’m indifferent to power like leading a fucking coup. Also, the president is not elected by the Polish people but by the National Assembly, and some members of that body would be arrested if they showed up in Warsaw.

I’ve realized that I’m so pissed off at this coup because I’ve always resented that World War II started when Germany invaded a country with an authoritarian, anti-Semitic regime, Poland, rather than an actual democracy like, say, Czechoslovakia.

There’s a civil case running alongside the criminal trial of the Hungarians who forged French francs to fund a far-right/fascist coup. In the civil case, the Bank of France is demanding only one (1) franc... plus all the forging equipment.  Fascist leader Franz Ulain, who is the lawyer for Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz, points out that Napoleon counterfeited pounds and rubles. In the criminal case, the coupsters’ lawyers are hailing them as the greatest national heroes since Kossuth; I’m rather reminded of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch trial.

Al Jolson resigns from the Westchester Biltmore Country Club after it objected to him bringing a Jew to play golf with him.

At the House of Representatives hearings about possibly banning mediums in the District of Columbia, Anna Fletcher, wife of Sen. Duncan Upshaw Fletcher (D-Florida) testifies that she’s been an “investigator” for 25 years, has never met a dishonest medium, and received a message from her dead father written on a slate in his handwriting. Harry Houdini calls her “sincere” but denies such a thing is possible: “Every medium who uses a trumpet or writes on slates is a fraud.”

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Today -100: May 21, 1926: Restful quiets are the best kind of quiets

The British coal strike continues, as both sides reject Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s proposals to end it.

In a speech to the New York City Bar Association, state Supreme Court Justice William Harmon Black calls for the death penalty for perjury in murder cases, like they did in ancient Rome. He also says jurors must be taught that they’re cowards if they acquit murderers because they are squeamish about the methods of the death penalty.

Thomas Edison says Americans don’t even want talking movies. “Americans require a restful quiet in the moving picture theatre.” Hearing the actors speak would just destroy the illusion. (Unlike seeing the actors in black and white?) Annoyingly for this blog, he refuses to answer a question about what the world will be like in 100 years.

The Jewish population of Poland supports Marshal Piłsudski’s coup, thinking they’ll be better off. Good luck with that.

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Today -100: May 20, 1926: Of vetoes and kings

NY Gov. Al Smith vetoes a Republican bill to redistrict State Assembly & Senate seats, giving R’s seats in Democratic Manhattan. He also vetoes a raise for public teachers, I think but am not wholly sure because it would come at the expense of other priorities, and approves a referendum calling for the loosening of Prohibition. He says this is needed because Prohibition’s popularity in the state has never been quantified. The Legislature approved the 18th Amendment in 1919 after refusing to put it to the voters and the issue has since found its way into low-level elections of officials who have nothing to do with Prohibition.

The military backers of Marshal Piłsudski’s coup want to make him King of Poland.

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Today -100: May 19, 1926: Of crooks, criminals and dupes

The House District of Columbia Committee is holding hearings on ... mediums, specifically whether to ban them in the District of Columbia. The result of which is the White House denying – officially denying, mind you – that any seances have been held at the White House since Coolidge became president. These hearings are becoming a combat between mediums, mostly women, and Harry Houdini, who calls them “crooks and criminals.” He also calls Arthur Conan Doyle a “dupe” of the spiritualists.

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Today -100: May 18, 1926: Cramp by name, cramp by nature

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says the General Strike™ didn’t cost the government more than ₤750,000, so there’ll be no need to raise taxes.

The industrial secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen says the strike cost the union ₤1m and the railway companies ₤5.5m, which I’m mostly reporting in order to inform you that the industrial secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen is named Charlie Cramp.

A group is formed in Czechoslovakia to combat fascism. Former Cabinet minister Becyhne demands that Acting Chief of the Army General Staff Radola Gajda either deny being a card-carrying Fascist or resign. (Gadja will shortly be forced out and in a few months will found and head the National Fascist Community).

Headline of the Day -100:

Sigh.

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Today -100: May 17, 1926: Southern Baptists sound like fun

Bishop George Caruana denies having deceived Mexico when he entered the country. He says he told the immigration inspector that he was a teacher, “without, however, any intention of hiding any other titles that I have.” You know, Apostolic Delegate, that sort of other title.

Wilhelm Marx of the Zentrum party will be the next German chancellor, his second time in the job. He’ll retain Hans Luther’s Cabinet except for the justice minister and, er, Hans Luther. His Cabinet will only have minority support in the Reichstag and can be overturned by either the Socialists or the Nationalists or a strong breeze.

The Southern Baptist convention condemns beauty contests, card-playing, dancing, late-night joy-riding and “general mixed bathing.”

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Today -100: May 16, 1926: Dance, Hopis, Dance!

The Norge has reappeared. It has discovered no new land in the Arctic.

The Underwood Typewriter Company introduces the first typewriter with Chinese characters.

Polish president Stanisław Wojciechowski and the Cabinet resign, submitting to Piłsudski’s coup. Piłsudski won’t be prime minister, contenting himself with Minister of War and running things from behind the scenes, fooling no one.

Russia doesn’t seem to mind the near-fascist coup in its neighbor but France is rather concerned.

At a sesquicentennial event in Williamsburg, Coolidge says the states are the sheet anchors of the US and should stop giving up their powers to the federal government, which should contract.

The British Labour Party repudiates the General Strike™: “For the purpose of checking unconstitutional governments, and acting as a defensive weapon in the industrial battle of labour, the general strike has its place, but the emancipation of the people from capitalism and the re-establishment of Socialism must be achieved primarily by an educational and political organization.” Re-establishment?

Mexico has rejected the Vatican’s request to resume diplomatic relations, but the Vatican tries to sneak an envoy (official title: Apostolic Delegate), Rev. George Caruana (a US citizen, born in Malta, Bishop of Puerto Rico and the Antilles) into the country. Mexico is now deporting him.

Some Hopi Indians from Arizona do some of their religious dances on Capitol Plaza in D.C. before a crowd that includes senators, Supreme Court justices & VP Dawes. They have war bonnets, bear skins and dance with six Arizona black snakes. Their purpose is to demonstrate that Hopi rituals are not cruel or demonic or something, as claimed by people who want Congress to ban them. Sen. Ralph Cameron (R-Arizona) says the dance is not as bad as the Charleston. The NYT says it’s a bit like the hula.

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Today -100: May 15, 1926: Of dead spots, coups & kaisers, and charlestons

After passing over the North Pole, the Norge has disappeared. Or just wandered into a “radio dead spot.”

The searches by German cops investigating the far-right coup plot turned up letters from Heinrich Claß of the Pan-German League to former kaiser Wilhelm and his wife Hermine informing them of the coup plans. The cops also uncovered a hidden munitions dump in a forest near Berlin. Royalist newspapers explain this away as for hunting purposes, “though how hand grenades could be used in deer-stalking and why the whole supply was carefully buried is not explained.”

The Catholic Zentrum Party are angling for the chancellorship in the next coalition government, with some suggesting Cologne’s mayor Konrad Adenauer. He may have to wait a while.

Taking advantage of the coup in Poland, Lithuania invades, trying to recapture the part of Silesia held by Poland.

A world dancing master congress in Paris attacks that “immoral” “negro dance,” the Charleston, but some wish to “correct its faults” and make it into a decent dance. To that end, they set up a committee to carry out this purification. They complain that negro bands refuse to play the Boston, the Paso doble, and the Scottish Espagnole, preferring to play jazz.

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Today -100: May 14, 1926: Our resisting powers are unimpaired

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin says he won’t “countenance” employers using the collapse of the General Strike™ to reduce wages or increase hours. Oh he’ll totally countenance that. Hell, he is totally countenancing that right now.

The Trades Union Congress says it will resist to the utmost “any attempt to impose humiliating terms” on returning workers; “Our resisting powers are unimpaired.” In other news: employers are totally imposing humiliating terms on returning workers, or not (so far) taking them back at all. And the TUC’s resisting powers are totally impaired.

Jesus, Marshal Józef Klemens Piłsudski’s coup required only 2,500 troops to seize Warsaw. Pres. Stanisław Wojciechowski is (falsely) reported to have been arrested.

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Today -100: May 13, 1926: Not as murderers but as radicals

The General Strike™ is over. Except for the coal miners, who have been abandoned by the Trades Union Congress, and will continue striking for another 7 months. A. J. Cook, secretary of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain points out that the decision of the TUC (which was never enthusiastic about the strike) was made without consulting the miners who, to be fair, have rejected every possible offer of compromise (as have the mineowners). The TUC gets nothing for its surrender, the government gives nothing, so that was a fun nine days for, to repeat, nothing. When a delegation arrives at Downing Street, Prime Minister Baldwin dickishly doesn’t let them in until he sends out the minister of labour to receive assurances that the strike has been called off.

King George recommends amnesia: “Let us forget whatever elements of bitterness the events of the past few days have created and only remember how steady and how orderly the country remained though severely tested.”

Baldwin says this was “a victory of the common sense of the best part of the whole of the United Kingdom” and likewise recommends looking forwards instead of backwards, which will be difficult for those workers on whom many industries will inflict revenge such as firings, loss of seniority and pension rights, reduced wages, being forced to sign statements admitting “guilt,” etc. On the BBC, Baldwin says, “our whole duty at the moment is to forget all recrimination.”

German Chancellor Hans Luther and his cabinet resign after the Democrats & Socialists withdraw from the coalition because of Luther’s attempt to compromise with the Nationalists over... flags. Specifically whether imperial flags – I believe it’s the navy flag, which has the old kaisery colors – will fly over Germany’s embassies alongside the real flag. They accuse Luther of coming under the influence of the reactionary right. I mean, they’re not wrong about the flag thing undermining the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, but there was a literal fascist coup plot uncovered, you know, yesterday. 

The plans for that coup, in which involve Pres. Hindenburg would dissolve the Reichstag before being forced out himself, the end of freedom of the press, the right to meeting, strikes, etc., with executions ordered by court-martials, and, oh yeah, “The Jews were to be segregated in a concentration camp and their property seized.”

Marshal Józef Klemens Piłsudski, forced out as Poland’s chief of state in 1923, leads a coup. Soldiers occupy Warsaw.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court rules that Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were lawfully convicted. Their lawyer argued (in January) that they were tried “not as murderers but as radicals.”

Federal Judge Julian Mack orders the Fish Trust dissolved.

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Today -100: May 12, 1926: Of flag Poles, lynchings, labor solidarity, and royalists

Roald Amundsen flies over the North Pole in the semi-rigid (hey, it’s cold up there) airship The Norge and, unlike Richard Byrd a couple of days ago, he can actually prove it: the multi-national crew drop flags on the ice. Everyone on the Norge is pissed off that pilot Umberto Nobile’s Italian flag is larger than the Norwegian and American ones.

Henry Patterson, a black man, is lynched in LaBelle, Florida after he escapes from a cop car after being arrested for attacking a white woman. Except he hadn’t: the woman just started screaming when she saw a black man, as was the custom. He is shot by the mob and his corpse is hanged from a tree.

The British government, using emergency powers, diverts paper intended for the Times to that purveyor of bullshit, the British Gazette.

Pravda complains that the striking British miners’ union rejection of funds from the Soviet Union, which it says was done to demonstrate that the strike is purely economic and not revolutionary.  “But can’t they see that the general strike must be political and international. Labor solidarity is one of their strongest trumps.”

Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera wants to reform bullfights by... using younger horses. Ok, I stopped reading this article because, fuck. Seriously, blindfolded horses? WTF, Spain?

Berlin police raid the offices and homes of associates of right-wing newspaper baron Alfred Hugenberg (but not his?), as well as the Viking Bund, the United Fatherland Societies and other such organizations. They find evidence of a plot to overthrow the Weimar government and establish a military dictatorship (hint to plotters: maybe don’t leave memos titled “Dictatorship” lying around).

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Today -100: May 11, 1926: Wherein is revealed what is steadily sagging, and it may not be what you think!

Alton Parker, 73, Democratic presidential nominee in 1904, dies.

 

There are several deaths in railway accidents in Britain, which is what happens when your trains are driven by volunteer strike-breakers.

No effect!

The NYT’s T. R. Ybarra sees the General Strike™ “steadily sagging.”

In Parliament, Churchill defends the government-produced British Gazette, which he edits, as “the only means of spreading authentic news throughout the country.” In fact, “authentic news” here means lying outrageously about the effectiveness of the strike and the degree to which business is going on and suppressing, as Lloyd George points out, the appeal by the Archbishop Canterbury for a negotiated settlement.

Though not mentioned in the paper, the BBC has also been turned into a government propaganda outlet, telling lies about strikers returning to work and not allowing any Labour types on air throughout the strike.

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Today -100: May 10, 1926: Of poles and gishes

Commander Richard Byrd and his pilot Floyd Bennett have flown to the North Pole and circled it a few times. Or say they did. Byrd’s records of the journey are... suspect. 

Coolidge says he’s proud that it was Americans who made this historic flight/fraud/whatever.

The British government is sending convoys of food through London streets accompanied by large numbers of soldiers with machine-guns, to bolster the narrative that the General Strike™ is attempting to win by starving the people.

Do you care what Dorothy and Lilian Gish think of the General Strike™? Does anyone? Well, the NYT informs us that the (American) actors, currently visiting London, are interested in it but entirely neutral. So now you know.

In Paris, Joan of Arc Day is marked by clashes between royalists (the Camelots du Roi) and police trying to stop them holding processions.

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Today -100: May 9, 1926: Of rumors and radios

The British government denies rumors that soldiers are shooting at mobs of strikers (if I haven’t already said this: no one died during the General Strike™).

The Trades Union Congress was holding back some unions from striking, saving them as a second line of defense, but some of them want to join the fun and down tools anyway, including electrical and gas workers. The TUC will say Sure, fine, whatever, because what are they gonna do, tell them to go back to work?

Strike leaders reject offers of aid from the Soviet Union which haven’t actually been made. They may not know that the government banned wire transfers from abroad to stop just such aid.

The Senate Interstate Commerce Committee decides to remove control over radio from Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover (which a federal circuit court did last month anyway, leaving no system of control at all), and assign it to a 5-person commission appointed by the president, with Senate confirmation, because radio is becoming too important in American life to be entrusted to any one person. Licenses will be issued for two-year periods. No swearing or slander will be allowed.

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Today -100: May 8, 1926: Nothing to fear but fraud itself

Former Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty is arrested, along with former Alien Property Custodian Thomas W. Miller (in charge of property seized during the War) and former RNC dude John King, for defrauding the US over the management of alien property. Not for literally defrauding the government, but because their taking large “commissions” from a Swiss company to which they transferred $7m from the German-owned American Metal Company constitutes defrauding the government of their honest, unbiased judgment. Daugherty says “I have nothing to fear.”

British Home Sec. Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) appeals for 30,000 more volunteer special constables to maintain safety/break the General Strike™. And the government announces to members of the military that “any action which they may find it necessary to take in an earnest endeavor (!) to aid the civil power will receive, both now and afterward, the full support of his Majesty’s Government.” 

The British government claims that the transport and railway workers’ unions are threatening the British food supplies. The Churchill-edited British Gazette says so. It’s not true, of course. The unions are also not attempting to overthrow the government, nor are they run by anarchists & Communists, as Churchill and many other Tories seem to think.

However, the Gazette does get worked up about all the wild rumors doing the rounds (at least the wild rumors it isn’t starting itself), such as that a couple of cops were killed or an omnibus was thrown into the Thames.

Nathan Leopold Jr., of Leopold n’ Loeb fame, refuses the kind offer of some prisoners making an escape after they kill a deputy warden at Stateville Prison, or at least that’s what he’ll be claiming. Leopold was in the solitary wing at the time for stealing some sugar from the kitchen, and was handcuffed in a standing position.

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Today -100: May 7, 1926: Of uttermost farthings, cricket as usual, and fürstenenteignungs

Sir John Simon of the Liberal Party, who used to be attorney general, declares that the General Strike™ is illegal (it isn’t) and every union leader is liable to damages “to the uttermost farthing of his personal possessions.”

Lucy Baldwin, wife of the prime minister, is dragooning society ladies into, I guess, driving working women around London.

The General Strike™ (Day Four) is settling in to dogged obstinacy and bitterness (the article uses the word “dogged” several times).

The General Strike™: In Glasgow and Edinburgh, street cars operated by “volunteer motormen” are smashed up.

Taxis in London are now also on strike.

But the Cabinet decides on “cricket as usual.”

The Reichstag rejects, by a narrow vote, a measure to expropriate the estates of the former royal families (the word for such an act is fürstenenteignung) as called for by the referendum in March. So now there’ll have to be another referendum next month, and they’ve tinkered with the voting system to make it harder to win.

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Today -100: May 6, 1926: Constitutional Government is being attacked

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin says he’d be happy to resume negotiations – after the General Strike™ is called off. He issues an appeal to the British people, saying “Constitutional Government is being attacked,” asking “all good citizens” to “bear with fortitude and patience” any hardships from the strike, which he calls “the road to anarchy and ruin.” He talks about the law, which is “in your keeping,” without naming any actual laws that are being broken.

NYT stringer T. R. Ybarra, the son of a former Venezuelan minister of war, is content to report from his office: “The sentence I am writing was interrupted a few minutes ago by the noise of an angry scuffle in the street outside.” Strikers are trying to prevent the distribution of newspapers from the nearby London Times building.

The unions respond to the government’s British Gazette by starting their own paper, The British Worker, edited by Hamilton Fyfe, editor of the Daily Herald. Partly due to a shortage of paper, the Worker will never reach the circulation the Gazette achieved.

AP says that following the killing of  Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin, “‘Scarface’ Al Caponi [sic]” and “One-Eyed Dick” have fled to Manitoba. As funny as it would be if one of Capone’s gang were called “One-Eyed Dick,” I’m pretty sure none ever were.

Sinclair Lewis refuses the Pulitzer Prize (with its $1,000) he was awarded for Arrowsmith. He says prizes make authors seek “alien rewards” rather than quality and a group like the Pulitzer jury should not become the arbiter of quality, like the French Academy. Ralph Pulitzer says Lewis “has the right to refuse any prize awarded to him, whether he does so from principle or from self-exploitation.”

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Today -100: May 5, 1926: Golly, a white elephant

Most British papers have been shut down by the General Strike™. The Times is literally a leaflet today. The Daily Mail tries to print in Paris, but the French printers said hell no. So the government starts its own propaganda rag, The British Gazette. The NYT seems bemused by its column on Zoo Notes (a white elephant is coming from Burma!). Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill, who was after all once a war reporter, is overseeing it and writing much of its content.

The government raises the price of milk to 2s a quart (and no, the NYT doesn’t say what the pre-strike price was, that would be informative, just stop asking).

Oxford University will grant leave of absence to students wanting to blackleg as a lark (newspapers won’t shut up about these young jackanapes).

 

“Britishers are such good walkers that lack of transportation facilities is not proving such a hardship to them as it would to continental dwellers.”

Cricket matches and horse races are suspended.

The Prince of Wales races back to Britain from France on an aeroplane so he can help out by doing, um, important emergency prince stuff. Did no one tell him that horse meets and cricket matches are suspended?

Nicaragua declares a state of internal war. There’s a Liberal revolutionary movement, whatever that means.

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Today -100: May 4, 1926: Challenged by an alternative government

The British government calls for volunteers to maintain vital services and people are lining up in large numbers to act as scabs against the General Strike™. The British Fascisti will organize their own efforts. The government gives itself emergency powers to, among other things, seize property, food & fuel, horses, cars, and utilities, to make arrests without warrant, and billet troops in private houses.

Before the strike starts, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin says, “The government has found itself challenged by an alternative government.” He warns that the General Strike™ will bring the country “nearer to civil war than for centuries.”

The unions which are ordering strikes include the Transport and General Workers (trains, street cars, buses), electrical, building, iron & steel. That’s 2,500,000 so far.

Food and hospitals and music halls will not be affected.

Following the refusal of union printers (who are not on strike per se) to print the Daily Mail unless an anti-General Strike™ editorial was removed, more and more newspapers are not appearing. However, the Mail is now being printed in Manchester, getting to London presumably in private cars. The Daily Mirror refuses to remove a list of railway stations where people can go to volunteer for blackleg work, so its printers don’t let it appear either.

Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith wins a Pulitzer.

Carteret, NJ Police Chief Henry Harrington says black Carterethoovians who return after the racist attacks will be protected.

Geez, the Orléanist pretender to the French throne died not 5 weeks ago and now its Victor, Prince Napoléon, the Bonapartist pretender to the throne, dies at 63. He’s been fake emperor since 1879 calling himself Napoleon V. His successor is his 12-year old son Louis, henceforth Napoleon VI, who will sit on the fake throne, or possibly on the floor if he doesn’t own a fake throne, for 71 years, dying on the exact same date as Five.

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Today -100: May 3, 1926: In which is revealed what cannot be tolerated by any civilised Government

The British General Strike™ is on after negotiations between the Trades Union Congress and the government fail. The government says there will be no further negotiations until the strike order is withdrawn. Also, they require as prerequisite for resuming negotiations the “sincere acceptance” of the Coal Commission report, including restructuring of the industry and interim increases in miners’ work hours and reduction in pay. Sincere acceptance! Sincere acceptance! Sincere!

In the coal fields, this is more a lock-out than a strike. The government doesn’t seem to be saying anything about that being called off.

The government claims that troop movements have nothing to do with smashing striking coal miners, they’re just there to provide “protection.” Why, if things kick off, they’ll probably primarily be protecting miners’ wives (sorry ‘bout all the alliteration, sometimes that just happens). “To suggest that they are partisans is absolutely unworthy and untrue.”

A Daily Mail editorial says “a general strike cannot be tolerated by any civilised Government” and that some of the miners’ leaders “are under the influence of people who mean no good to this country” and that a general strike “is not an industrial dispute; it is a revolutionary movement”. Or the editorial would say all that except the printers objected to it, so the newspaper is not printed today. Or for a while.

The government will use this as an excuse to end negotiations, citing “overt acts, including interference with the freedom of the Press.”

Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, running for governor against “Ma” Ferguson (and impeached former governor James Ferguson) calls “Fergusonism” (their term, not his) “the plundering of the public treasury through extravagance and mismanagement of the public revenues, and the diversion thereof to the benefit of political friends. I charge that ‘Fergusonism’ means political quackery and political fakery.”

Edith Wilmans, the first woman in the Texas Legislature (1923-5) is also running for governor. Since Wilmans was not re-elected in 1924, there are currently no women in the Lege. Responding to “Ma” Ferguson being an obvious sock puppet for her husband, Wilmans promises not to marry while in office.

The Austrian and Italian football teams break off relations with each other, the former objecting to Mussolini’s recent remarks about the South Tyrol.

A witness puts Al Capone at the scene of the murder of Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. The witness (unnamed) was in a Cicero restaurant when Capone, his brother Frank and some cronies burst in and got weapons out of a secret panel in the wall. The cops now fully understand the crime, including that McSwiggin was not the target, so I’m sure they’ll be wrapping the whole thing up quite soon.

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Today -100: May 2, 1926: Sordid capitalists are the worst kind of capitalists

Florida is boycotting Ohio industries because Ohio bans the sale of Florida land in Ohio, presumably because so much of it is fraudulent.

The British General Strike™ begins tomorrow, Monday. The coal strike, which was inevitable given the ending of government subsidies and the mineowners’ insistence on miners working longer hours for less money, is being joined by railroad workers, steel workers, newspaper pressmen, and a bunch of other unions. It’s not a true general strike as the Trades Union Congress (TUC) plans to escalate it by stages. The unions affiliated to the TUC give it the authority to negotiate with the government on their behalf. TUC General Secretary Ernest Bevin says, “We have no quarrel with the people. We are not declaring war on the people. War is being made by the Government, pushed on by the sordid capitalists.”

Italian newspapers say this could never happen in Fascist Italy (they didn’t do May Day yesterday, either).

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Today -100: May 1, 1926: Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity

The Spanish government exiles students and a Madrid U. professor of penal law, among others, to the Chaferine Islands, and suspends the newspaper Atalya for 8 days “for having published an article regarding the grazing grounds of the city.”

Fritz Rausenberger, the professor of ballistics (!) who invented the long-range gun Big Bertha, dies at 58.

Mussolini’s fat face will go on Italy’s banknotes, which is a very Trumpian move.

Walter Lippmann, “Puritanism De Luxe in the Coolidge Era,” Vanity Fair, May 1926 issue:

Mr. Coolidge’s genius for inactivity is developed to a very high point. It is far from being an indolent inactivity. It is a grim, determined, alert inactivity which keeps Mr. Coolidge occupied constantly. Nobody has ever worked harder at inactivity, with such force of character, with such unremitting attention to detail, with such conscientious devotion to the task. Inactivity is a political philosophy and a party program with Mr. Coolidge, and nobody should mistake his unflinching adherence to it for a soft and easy desire to let things slide. Mr. Coolidge’s inactivity is not merely the absence of activity. It is on the contrary a steady application to the task of neutralizing and thwarting political activity wherever there are signs of life. ... There have been presidents in our time who knew how to whip up popular enthusiasm. There has never been Mr. Coolidge’s equal in the art of deflating interest. ... He has discovered the value of diverting attention from the government, and with an exquisite subtlety that amounts to genius he has used dullness and boredom as political devices.

As a nation we have never spent so much money on luxury and pleasure as we are spending now. There has never in all history been such a widespread pursuit of expensive pleasure by a whole people. The American people can afford luxury and they are buying it furiously, largely on the instalment plan. And in the White House they have installed a frugal little man who in his personal life is the very antithesis of the flamboyant ideal that everybody is frantically pursuing. ... At a time when Puritanism as a way of life is at its lowest ebb among the people, the people are delighted with a Puritan as their national symbol. ... The Coolidges are really virtuous people in the old American sense, and they have provided this generation, which is not virtuous in that sense, with an immense opportunity for vicarious virtue.”

 

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Today -100: April 30, 1926: Of duels, series of molds, and aigoing

German Prez Hindenburg forces the Reichstag to change a proposed law requiring the sacking of  soldiers and civil servants guilty of dueling to one merely allowing them to be fired.

The French Academy of Science rejects the theory of Prof. Tissot of the Paris Museum of Natural History that “every living thing is but a series of mold”.

Japanese police in occupied South Korea have been suppressing Aigo gatherings mourning the former emperor/king Sunjong, who the Japanese dethroned in 1910 and died last week (the internet tells me that “aigo” means “oh dear” or “geez”). Another form this mourning takes is the stabbing of two Japanese aldermen in Seoul, one fatally.

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Today -100: April 29, 1926: Such a distinction is foreign to our soil

Chicago police think Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin was machine-gunned by killers imported from New York by, as they call him, “Al Brown, alias ‘Scarface Al’ Caponi” and John Torrio. They don’t know Capone was actually there.

Democrats in the House of Representatives filibuster (for a few hours, anyway) a bill to erect a monument to the 93rd Infantry Division, a segregated black unit that included the Harlem Hellfighters, in France. The bill is sponsored by the Hellfighters’ wartime captain, Rep. Hamilton Fish.

New York Supreme Court Justice William Carswell refuses a certificate of incorporation to the Colonial Association of Russian Workers and Peasants of America, because there are no peasants in the US: “Such a distinction is foreign to our soil.” The petitioners, naturalized citizens, “need education in Americanism,” Carswell says.

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Today -100: April 28, 1926: Of gangland killings, begging taxes, spas, and lepers

“Chicago gangsters” shoot up a car in Cicero with machine guns, killing Assistant State’s Attorney William McSwiggin. McSwiggin, a “hanging prosecutor” (7 executions in a 10-month period!) had unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Al Capone in the past, and Capone is one of the gunmen (well, he was there, he may or may not have personally wielded a Tommy gun), but McSwiggin wasn’t the target here. In fact, they didn’t know he was in the car; he was just heading to play cards with a couple of members of the O’Donnell Gang, one of whom, William “Klondike” O’Donnell, owned the car they were driving through Capone territory, when the Capone-ettes spotted it.

Capone’s involvement is not yet known.

The House of Representatives votes 196-4 to put Prohibition enforcement under the Treasury Dept.

German prohibitionists are pushing local option. The US is worried that local booze bans would reduce Germany’s national revenue, endangering its ability to pay reparations.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill is proposing to tax betting 5%, and his fellow Tories are not happy. It will end racing as we know it! It will force punters into back-alley wagers! It will legitimize betting! Will no one think of the farmers who grow the oats the race horses eat! 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who has “been in Georgia for his health,” buys the Warm Springs, Georgia spa he thinks is helping his polio.

The racial violence in Carteret, NJ has led to some arrests: not the angry white dudes, of course, but some news photographers who tried to get some local men & boys to brandish sticks and clubs for the camera. In Red Bank, 20-some miles away from Carteret, arson destroys a public school attended only by black students.

Ford Motor Comp. made a profit of only $29 on each car produced in 1925, down from $40 in 1924. Production difficulties are claimed to be the problem, and certainly not the declining popularity of the Model T.

The NY City Health Commissioner Louis Harris warns hospitals and dermatologists to be on the lookout for Antonia Ramoa, a woman with leprosy who escaped as she was being forcibly removed to the leper colony at Carville, Louisiana.

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Today -100: April 27, 1926: Sex!

A white mob burns a black Baptist church in Carteret, NJ and forces 100 black families out of the town after a couple of white guys are stabbed, one fatally, during a fight.

Mae West’s Sex opens, er, so to speak. It’s her first starring role. She also wrote and is directing it. The NYT calls it “A crude, inept play, cheaply produced and poorly acted”. So it will run for 375 performances.

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Today -100: April 26, 1926: He was against abuse of power before he was for abuse of power

Paris police investigate the story in a magazine that a ballerina, unnamed but obvious, bathes in 300 quarts of milk every day, which her valet then sells back to milk traders. They conclude that the story is made up.

Headline of the Day -100:

Zip the Pinhead, chief freak at Barnum & Bailey’s & Ringling Brothers Circus, has died at... 83? 69? Also known as “Zip - What Is It?”, a name supposedly bestowed upon him by Charles Dickens.

Sidney Barrett of Mahopac, NY and Hazel Williams marry despite a Ku Klux Klan warning to them not to (she may or may not have some negro blood). They’re supposed to be living with his uncle, but he got a gentle request from the Klan to allow the couple to live in his spare rooms but to admit any kluxers who happen to drop by.

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Today -100: April 25, 1926: Then make the most of it

Texas governor “Ma” Ferguson issues her re-election platform, including a defense of “the administration of the Fergusons.” Taxes are down and there hasn’t been a single lynching under her administration. She calls for a tax of 1¢ a cigar. “If Feargusonism is treason, then make the most of it” is her rather odd motto.

Poland: the government of Aleksander Skrzyński resigned last week after its finance minister resigned. He will try to form a new cabinet, this time with... wait for it... a Jew. An actual Jew. The way the article is written, it’s hard to tell if he’s got a specific Jew in mind or just figures that Jews are good at that finance stuff.

Princess Mary of Britain denies – vehemently – that she has bobbed her hair, after an unfortunate portrait made it look like she had.

German judges will no longer be allowed to snooze at the bench. For a century the criminal code has held that a judge’s physical presence, awake or otherwise, is sufficient to ensure a fair trial. However, the new rule only considers it sleep if it’s, like, really deep; light dozing and snoring are still acceptable.

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Today -100: April 24, 1926: Practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition

The Illinois State Democratic Convention calls for modification of the Volstead Act to allow states to permit light wines and beer. “We favor practical temperance rather than theoretical prohibition.” The Republicans also meet, but fail to take any position on booze.

Germany & Russia agree a neutrality treaty.

Austria will change its army uniforms from green to grey, like the German uniform. They’re hoping for Anschluß by incremental stealth, hoping no one notices, or something.

Italy’s Interior Minister Luigi Federzoni creates a committee to combat birth control information or, as he terms it, “insidious, practical, pseudo-scientific neo-malthusian propaganda.” Italy’s greatest riches, Federzoni says, “is in the multiplication of its children, which is the strongest investment for invincible world expansion.”

The furniture of former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 84, is seized because he refused to pay the fine for delaying paying his taxes. He buys back the furniture before it’s carted away.

New Jersey Gov. Harry Moore does indeed refuse to meet the textile strikers’ rep Albert Weisbord and cancels an arbitration meeting, insisting that Weisbord should have had the “tact” not to show up.

Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot will premiere tomorrow at La Scala. Puccini died in 1924. Arturo Toscanini, who also premiered La bohème, will conduct.

In other opera news, Eduard Künnecke is adapting Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Almost finished, he says. He won’t finish it. I guess the next musical Dickens is Oliver.

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Today -100: April 23, 1926: Of gratification, trying English, and collapsible beds

Failed Headline of the Day -100:

“Ratification Gratification” was sitting right there.

Headline That... They Have To Have Known What They Were Doing, Right? of the Day -100:

That’s not the English language, which is tried but rarely in the US Senate to this day, but judge George Washington English of the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, a Wilson appointee, accused of, and now impeached for, various abuses of power.

The Passaic textile strikers pick Albert Weisbord to represent them, despite Gov. Harry Moore’s attempt to veto him. Will the guv refuse to meet with him?

The London production of Harlan Thompson & Harry Archer musical “Little Jessie James,” a big hit on Broadway a couple of years back, is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because there is a bed in one scene. Thompson points out that it is only a collapsible bed, “but the censor declined to regard it as less objectionable for that reason.”

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Today -100: April 22, 1926: Of unmistakable Communists, territorial limits, and princesses & jixes

NJ Gov. Harry Moore intervenes in the Passaic region textile strike by talking with mill owners and some random strikers but he refuses to speak with the actual strike leaders because they’re “unmistakably Communists.” Albert Weisbord, a strike leader who is totally a Communist, calls Moore, who is totally a bad egg, “a bad egg.”

A Circuit Court rules that the US has no jurisdiction to seize foreign rum ships beyond the 3-mile limit, treaties or no treaties.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) was present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth, presumably not actually in the birthing chamber, or whatever they call it, following the ancient custom that a government official attend a royal birth to ensure there’s no hanky-panky with the line of succession.

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Today -100: April 21, 1926: Of princesses and child marriages

Disney Princess Elizabeth of York is born. Although she’s third in line to the throne, she isn’t expected to ascend to the throne unless... well, just unless.

The NY Legislature passes a ban on marriages of children under the age of 14. A provision to also ban marriages between 14 and 16 without judicial approval disappeared mysteriously along the way. By the by, there is only one woman member of the Assembly, Rhoda Fox Graves. There are no women in the NY Senate; the first, Graves, will be elected in 1934.

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Today -100: April 20, 1926: Of courts and fasts

Secretary of State Kellogg rejects US participation in a conference of World Court members to discuss US reservations.

Two German hunger artists beat Jolly’s fasting record, quitting at 46 days. One of them is named Max Fastello, supposedly.

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Today -100: April 19, 1926: We cannot afford revelries

Turkey calls military recruits to the colors, worried about Mussolini’s speech in Tripoli and a suspected deal between Greece & Italy for each to grab chunks of Turkey, with Italy in the meantime building up Greece’s military.

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos is installed as president of Greece and will give up all the dictatorial powers he seized in January (suuuure he will).  He will free all the political prisoners & journalists he had arrested.

Headline of the Day -100:

“We cannot afford revelries,” Michael Stalin says (the NYT thinks that’s his first name. I say Russian history would have been very different if everyone had called him Mike).

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Today -100: April 18, 1926: Of poles, desire, and lightning

Roald Amundsen’s Arctic expedition, using an Italian airship, will drop Fascist flags and whatnot on the Pole.

The  Desire Under the Elms trial in L.A. ends in a mistrial.

The radio section of the Sunday NYT explains how not to get electrocuted through your antenna in a thunderstorm.

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Today -100: April 17, 1926: Air piracy is the geekiest kind of piracy

District Court Judge James Wilkerson rules that Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover has no legal power to regulate radio broadcasting and acquits Zenith Radio Corp’s Chicago station, WJAZ, which changed its frequency without authorization to one assigned to Canadian stations in an act of “air piracy.”

Federal Prohibition Cracker-Downer Gen. Lincoln Andrews says he can stop all bootlegging if he’s given $3,000,000 and left alone. The money could come from taxing bootleggers.

The Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms concludes. Their actors’ lawyer quotes the Bible and Shakespeare to show that they had dirty words too. The prosecutor claims that the performance given to the jury was “a parlor version,” with the actors slurring the naughtier lines.

The Royal Geographic Society spells the Baltic nation “Estonia,” but the US is sticking with “Esthonia.”

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Today -100: April 16, 1926: Thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

Note to New York Times -100: must you refer to the king of Swaziland as “ebony ruler”? Sobhuza II tried to assert his rights to prevent an Englishman evicting Swazis; the Privy Council in London decides that he, while ostensibly ruler of a protectorate rather than a colony, has retained fewer rights than he thought he did.

British Home Sec Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) says the anxiety in the Cabinet over a possible coal strike is greater than that experienced during the war. PM Stanley Baldwin is personally intervening, but he doesn’t bring much to the table.

Mussolini, described as “radiant” and whose nose is no longer painted with iodine, leaves Libya after a speech explaining the importance of the colony to Italy: “Italians are people who reproduce rapidly and they are going to continue to do so. Italy is hungry for land and here is the opportunity to satisfy her.” What’s the Italian for lebensraum? He suggests to Italian colonists that “You cannot build a great colony by dancing at the Grand Hotel. You must learn the technique of colonization.”

Britain’s chief theatrical censor, the Lord Chamberlain, insists that American actor Frances Carson, playing Salome in Leonid Andreyev’s Katerina at the Barnes Theatre (alongside John Gielgud), wear more clothes, but she refuses the offer of a shawl.

An owl invades Calvin Coolidge’s White House bedroom, quietly perching on his bedpost.

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Today -100: April 15, 1926: Of rioting thomases, no relations, beer without saloons, and ladies being good

Norman Thomas, the Socialist who ran for NYC mayor & NY governor and will run for president a bunch of times, is arrested in Garfield, NJ (next to Passaic) for testing whether the reading of the Riot Act by cops at one small meeting bans all gatherings of strikers forever. He’s brought before Justice of the Peace Hargreaves, who refuses to allow him to have legal counsel.

Sen. William McKinley loses his bid for re-election in the Illinois Republican primaries in a campaign that largely focused on his support for the US joining the World Court. Some people criticize Coolidge for not coming to McKinley’s support given that he was backing Coolidge’s World Court policy.

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, head of federal Prohibition enforcement, says that allowing low-alcohol-content beer while still keeping saloons closed would make enforcement easier. Light wines he’s not so sure about. He will get a lot of shit for these comments.

France and Germany agree to allow each other’s planes overflight rights.

“Lady, Be Good,” the musical written by George & Ira Gershwin, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, is received with enthusiasm in London.

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Today -100: April 14, 1926: We call it contempt of court in New York

Herrin, Illinois, which we haven’t heard from for a while, again experiences Klan-related rioting, this time at the polls where the office of Williamson Country sheriff is up for grabs. Klan dude John Smith is attacked while he’s challenging the votes of Italians. Yadda yadda yadda, 6 dead, 3 kluxers and 3 anti-kluxers, the latter all sheriff’s deputies.

The NY Lege removes the Motion Picture Censorship Commission’s ability to censor newsreels.

British coal mine owners and the miners’ union meet, but fail to come to an agreement. This is coming to a head with the scheduled end of the government subsidy of the industry on May 1st. If affiliated unions also come out, we’re looking at a General Strike™.

The sheriff in Passaic County, New Jersey is to take over breaking the textile strike in the town of Garfield, invited by its mayor, William Burke, who happens to work for the Botany Worsted Mills. The sheriff will bring 150 deputies with riot guns and will read the riot act, which would ban public meetings and speeches and, of course, picketing. ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hayes, correctly pointing out that “a striker cannot get justice in Garfield” after Justice of the Peace Hargreaves sets a $5,000 bail for newspaper owner Robert Wolfe, charged with not obeying quickly enough an order to move along. The JP threatens to arrest Hayes for disorderly conduct; Hayes points out “We call it contempt of court in New York.” Cheeky! Hargreaves also stops Hayes’s stenographer and a reporter from taking notes because “This is not a court of law, it is a court of martial law.” Hargreaves complains about “outside agitators.” I wonder when that phrase was first used?

Yale University forgives the freshmen who rioted against compulsory chapel attendance.

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Today -100: April 13, 1926: Just the same, it’s a nightgown

The first duel, at least in France, conducted with 4-ounce gloves is fought, if that is the word, between a Romanian and a Swiss in a Paris gymnasium. One is nearly knocked out in the 3rd round and the Swiss dude declared the winner. The subject of their quarrel is not disclosed.

The Senate ousts Smith Wildman Brookhart (“insurgent Republican”-Iowa) from his seat by a vote of 45 to 41. A bunch of Republicans join the D. motion because Brookhart supported Robert La Follette rather than Coolidge in the 1924 presidential election. They replace him with Dem. Daniel Steck, who Brookhart defeated, barely, questionably, in the 1924 election.

Steck will fill out his term and lose his bid for re-election in 1930. Brookhart will run for Iowa’s other Senate seat, winning the primary less than two months from now and then the general, making him work colleagues with Steck, which I’m sure wasn’t awkward in the slightest.

Col. Alexander Williams, commander of the Marine Corps’ 4th Regiment, is being court-martialed for having been drunk at a party.

Sentence of the Day -100: “He said he had dim recollections of a fight, but could not recall that an ostrich was his opponent.”

At the Los Angeles trial of 17 cast members of Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, a police officer who attended the play on behalf of the Board of Education says he found the play not to be of a clean character, but under cross-examination admits it would not incite him to any questionable action. The sensitive copper says he blushed and “After I left that place I couldn’t look the world in the face for hours.” He says his “feelings were hurt, terribly hurt,” especially by one actress wearing a nightgown. A defense lawyer shows him a photo of the extremely modest garment. “Just the same, it’s a nightgown,” the bashful copper insists. “And so you object to flannel nightgowns, do you?” “Yes, sir.”

A new New York state law punishes restaurant owners who falsely claim their food is kosher.

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Today -100: April 12, 1926: No one can stop our inexorable will

Mussolini has hisself a “triumphal procession” in Tripoli, although what his triumph is is unclear. He has iodine on his nose from being shot, and a white plume topping off his uniform (that of an honorary corporal in the Fascist militia), but can I find a picture of the beplumed Moose? I cannot. The NYT says he “looked every inch a Roman ruler” as he rode on a horsie past “strange crowds which seemed to combine the wild savagery of the desert with the instinctive calm of an ancient people”.

Honorary Corporal Mussolini’s address to the Libyan natives asserts that his visit is not a mere administrative act but an affirmation of the Italian people. “No one can stop our inexorable will,” he brags.

The buses of the Philadelphia-Asbury Park Coach Company will play radio programs in the day and motion pictures at night.

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