Today -100: July 4, 1926: Your sister wears knickers

Mexico issues the Calles Decree, which confiscates church property; bans non-Mexican-born ministers from doing minister stuff; bans non-secular teaching and religious primary schools; bans proselytizing to minors; bans ministers from meeting together, in public or private; bans them wearing religious outfits or symbols when out and about; gives the government ownership of all the churches; bans ministers from complaining publicly about any of this and religious newspapers can’t comment on any of this. Plus a whole lot more. It goes into effect on the 31st.

Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League begs the Senate committee investigating election spending not to release the names of the League’s donors.

London sees its first suffragist parade since the war, demanding the voting age be by equalized between the sexes. Emmeline Pankhurst, Lady Rhondda, and MP Ellen Wilkinson participate.

Charles Ponzi, who was on the run but was evidently captured without it making the NYT, telegraphs Pres. Coolidge asking for clemency and to be deported to Italy, which he calls a “compromise.” He’s also cabled Mussolini for help.

Headline of the Day -100: 

In a “former” saloon in the Bronx, the victim casts aspersions on women who wear knickers. The Tennesseehoovian says My sister wears knickers and she is a good girl! It escalates from there.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Polish dictator, was reported last week as resting in a sanatorium, but now says that was a ruse to cover for his carrying out an inspection of border troops. It’s unclear why such a ruse was required.

The French government rejects a request (it is not said from whom) to send the Mona Lisa to the Sesquicentennial Exhibition. 

Greek dictator Theodoros Pangalos proved unable to dictate the length of women’s skirts. His decree (issued January, I think) required skirts to be a maximum of 35 centimeters from the ground, with punishment falling on the father or husband of the offender. The decree wasn’t popular among women or indeed the police, who didn’t want to be in the skirt-measuring business, so 2 women skirt-measurers were hired. Then the cops arrested a woman who turned out to be the daughter of a Court of Appeal judge. Her trial was so unpopular that Pangalos has now rescinded the decree.

At the 2nd Nazi Party congress, the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung are renamed the Hitlerjugend.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: July 3, 1926: Of vares, Rothschilds, and governors-generalses

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the federal Dry Czar, threatens to resign if Congress doesn’t pass the laws he demands giving him way more powers. Congress rejected his plan to hire retired military officers for prohibition work (without affecting their retirement pay). The NYT says this is because congresscritters considered those jobs patronage fodder, but I can think of other reasons not to staff a policing agency with military types.

The Senate Rules Committee proposes banning any senator whose campaign spent more than $25,000 with their knowledge, including in the primary. This is aimed at Rep. William Scott Vare, Republican candidate for the Senate from Pennsylvania.

The French Chamber of Deputies refuses to seat Baron Maurice de Rothschild as deputy for the Hautes-Alpes Department because he spent too much money in his election in 1924. He’s been attending the Chamber since that election but without being allowed to vote. The campaign to unseat him was led by Communists. He’ll be re-elected anyway in October’s elections.

Governor General of Canada, Julian “Bungo” Byng dissolves Parliament, as he refused to do for Mackenzie king last week, after the Meighen government failed that confidence vote yesterday. Byng is criticized for letting many bills which were passed by Parliament lapse without royal assent, including 44 divorce bills. Mackenzie King and the Liberals will fight the election partly on the question of Canadian autonomy and Byng’s interference (Byng’s term of office expires shortly anyway).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: July 2, 1926: Of tigers & confidence

NY Gov. Al Smith evidently has his own zoo at the governor’s mansion, including an increasingly aggressive “Tammany Tiger” which he can’t persuade any real zoo to take. So he has it shot.

In other news, Al Smith can go fuck himself.

The very new Canadian government of Arthur Meighen loses a vote of confidence in Parliament by one vote.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: July 1, 1926: Women must fight their own battles

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith, asked if he’ll be running for re-election in 4 months, says, “I am not going to think anything more about that for a while. ... This is vacation time.” Tammany Hall is considering Robert F. Wagner of the NY Supreme Court as a replacement if Smith doesn’t run.

Spain’s King Alfonso and Queen Victoria have been vacationing in France, where police thwart a plot to assassinate him.

So what happened to the car in which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie were assassinated in 1914? Well, it was still in Sarajevo when the Great War broke out, so Yugoslavia wound up in possession of it and for a time the governor of Bosnia used it but after some incidents he decided it was haunted. A merchant bought it but also decided it was haunted and was driving to a possible buyer when it turned over and killed him. It then passed to a series of people and has now been bought for pennies by a Dr. Ragibkavara. Are you as skeptical about this story as I am? Good. (Update: Right, none of that is true. None of it.)

George Bernard Shaw, who has rejected invitations to address meetings in support of reducing the voting age for British women from 30 to 21, has his secretary respond, “Mr. Shaw desires me to say that women must fight their own battles. He is not to be lured into the ridiculous position of their male champion.” I respect that position but... imagine the speech he would give.

Fascist newspapers in Italy are praising the government order to reduce all newspapers to 6 pages, saying most journalism is just a waste of paper. Augusto Turati, Secretary General of the Fascist Party, says each province will have a single newspaper, “in which will be published the party’s orders, and the political acts of Fascism will be briefly illustrated. All the rest of the space will be devoted to things which are being constructed and work which is being carried out.” 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 30, 1926: Headses or tails

Mussolini, worried about Italy’s balance of trade and determined to increase Italian production, orders the work day increased from 8 hours to 9. He also bans the building of more expensive houses for a year and cafes, bars, night clubs etc. indefinitely. Gasoline for cars will be mixed with wine. The newspapers which he hasn’t already banned will be restricted to 6 pages.

The Italian public prosecutor’s office finds no evidence that the Socialist former deputy Tito Zaniboni’s attempt to assassinate Mussolini last year was instigated by the Freemasons.

The Treasury will mint a Sesquicentennial half-dollar coin with portraits of Coolidge and Washington, the first time a living president will appear on a US coin. That was illegal then like it’s illegal now. I had assumed Mr. C. and Mr. W. would appear on opposite sides, but actually...

That really is terrible. Also, the Sesquicentennial celebrates the birth of the nation at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and neither Washington nor Coolidge signed the Declaration of Independence. The Liberty Bell appears on the other side. 1 million of these things were minted, to be sold at the Exposition; 859,000 went unsold and were melted down.

New York Democrats are carefully scrutinizing the speech Gov. Al Smith gave at a dinner to determine whether he might be convinced to run for re-election 4 months from now.

Coolidge denies saying fishing is a sport only for youths.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 29, 1926: Of Wing-Dings, vets, whips, and ironsides

The Governor General of Canada, Julian Byng, known, naturally, as “Bungo,” refuses Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s request to dissolve Parliament and call new elections. He is the first and last governor general to reject such a request. The most recent election was only last October and Byng thinks Arthur Meighen (C) should be allowed to try to form a government before there’s resort to another election. So King and his Cabinet, facing a motion of confidence over bribe-taking in the Customs Department and other scandals, resign. Meighen will try to form a Conservative government backed by only a plurality in Parliament (King’s Liberals have been ruling in a shaky coalition with the Progressives).

This is called the King–Byng Affair, or the King–Byng Wing-Ding. Those wacky Canadians.

The Senate passes a bill amending the World War Veterans’ act to provide hospitalization benefits for women veterans and nurses from the Spanish-American War in private hospitals, since VA hospitals are men-only.

The Educational Committee of the Prussian Diet rejects a Socialist motion to abolish corporal punishment in schools. Failing that, they tried to abolish it for girls. Then for 6-year-olds. But Prussians love them some whipping.

During the filming of “Old Ironsides,” a Wallace Beery film (with Boris Karloff in what I assume is a small role) which I haven’t seen but which is available on Tubi, a cannon explodes, destroying the masts, sending six extras falling to the deck. One is dead.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 28, 1926: Wait, and hear me out, what if we use the Navy to protect the negro’s ballot?

Gen. Manuel Gomes da Costa, the leader of last month’s coup in Portugal, declares himself supreme ruler. All political prisoners will be exiled.

The NAACP launches a $1m fund to fight Jim Crow laws. NAACP Exec. Sec. James Weldon Johnson says “The federal government will use a navy to prevent a man from taking  a drink, but will not empower a deputy marshal to protect the negro’s ballot.”

The manufacture of horsewhips dropped 58.5% in 1925 over 1923.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 27, 1926: Of gold, kluxers v. gypsies, and parole

Incoming French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux sacks Georges Robineau, the governor of the Banque de France who opposed the use of France’s gold reserves to defend the franc. Caillaux says Robineau had often expressed a desire to retire; Robineau denies this.

Austrian Socialist MPs stalk out of Parliament to protest it electing Anton Rintelen, the former governor of Styria, as minister of education, calling him a fascist, which is not wrong.

A group in Klan kostumes shoot up a Gypsy camp in Westchester Cty, New York.

New York criminals are hastily pleading guilty to get into Sing Sing before Wednesday, when parole laws change.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 26, 1926: Atlantis located, without even the benefit of Google Maps

Republicans are in disarray over Congress’s failure to pass a bill to aid farmers. Coolidge supports the Fess plan, involving aid to a cooperative marketing bureau, which is dead in the water.

German archaeologist Prof. Paul Borchardt says he’s figured out where Atlantis was: the Sahara Desert in Tunisia. It sank in an earthquake. Before that, it went to war with Egypt or something, dunno, stopped reading.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 25, 1926: Let the males have one place in the country where they can live in peace

Spain arrests 30 lawyers, journalists, army officers, etc. Evidently a conspiracy has been uncovered to... issue a manifesto calling for the restoration of constitutional rights.

The Senate Campaign Fund Investigating Committee questions Pittsburgh Police Superintendent Peter Paul Walsh, who admits having ordered detectives to get out the vote for John Stuchell Fisher and George Pepper, the Republican candidates for governor & US Senate respectively. And by “admits,” I mean Walsh lies about it until the letter he wrote to the Detective Bureau inspector is read out to him. And when I say “wrote,” he insists, “I did not write it Senator. The stenographer wrote it, but I signed it.” “And you dictated it?” “Yes sir.” (The letter, by the way, was stolen from the Detective Bureau by some whistleblower and delivered to the Committee). He claims neither candidates’ campaigns asked him to issue that order. The Committee has also been examining the large amounts of money the Anti-Saloon League inserted into the primaries.

The British House of Lords rejects by a vote of 125 to 80 a measure to allow peeresses to sit in the Lords.  “Let the males have one place in the country where they can live in peace,” exclaims Baron Banbury. Lord Cecil notes that the claim that women aren’t up to the physical strains of being a Member of Parliament hardly applies to the Lords.

Britain’s oldest general is Sir George Higginson, age 100, Crimean War vet.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 24, 1926: Maybe someone got him a beard for his birthday

Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson reappears. Believed to have drowned in the ocean a month ago, she claims to have actually been kidnapped and drugged and held for ransom in a shack in Mexico, then escaped when her kidnappers left her by herself. There are plenty of details I won’t go into, but there’s a good chance this is total horseshit.

Aristide Briand forms a government. The finance minister will be Joseph Caillaux for the umpteenth time.

Italy threatens to stop participating in the League of Nations unless anti-Fascist meetings are banned in Geneva. Swiss Foreign Minister Giuseppe Motta points out that a recent incident was caused by Fascists trying to disrupt an anti-Fash meeting.

Edward, Prince of Wales turns 32. “At the same age King Edward [VII] had a beard and was a father.” He goes to a horse show, as was the custom.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 23, 1926: In the long run

Philadelphia Mayor Freeland Kendrick, who is also president of the Sesquicentennial Exposition, denies the Ku Klux Klan a parade license and bans them from using the Sesquicentennial Auditorium. Kleagle Paul Winter says “They will pay in the long run, all right.”

Someone else who won’t be participating: Bishop Joseph Berry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who resigns from the Exposition committee because it will be open on Sundays such as July 4th.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 22, 1926: Of taxes & budgets

Coolidge says it will be a while before taxes can be reduced again, even as budget cuts, with more budget cuts planned, are increasing the size of the surplus, because who knows what could happen by 1928. I mean, who even knows?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 21, 1926: Gross ingratitude is the worst kind of ingratitude

Édouard Herriot fails to form a new French government; Aristide Briand gets another chance.

There’s a “riot” in Garfield, New Jersey, where the (Passaic-area) textile strike is in its 21st week. And by riot I mean cops attack a crowd that refuses their order to disperse. The crowd gets especially riled when the cops arrest a woman with 3 children, including a baby. The Garfield police have been recruiting special policemen, but the majority refuse to take their oath upon finding that the pay is only $23 a week.

The German referendum to confiscate the property of former ruling families in Prussia and other states (4 kings, 6 grand dukes, 5 dukes, 7 princes, etc) receives 96% of the vote, but the turnout is only 39%; 50% is required. So the monarchists win by boycotting the vote. A private letter from Pres. Paul von Hindenburg “leaked,” calling the measure “a deplorable lack of traditional feelings and an act of gross ingratitude.” Many people thought his intervention unseemly.

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s son Oliver comes out as a Spiritist. He’s seen ghosts and everything.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 20, 1926: Makin’ beer

Rep. Fiorello La Guardia makes some beer in his D.C. office by combining two legal products, a near-beer and a malt extract, to create beer with a 2.84% alcohol content, and giving it out. Experts pronounce the beer fine, but the Prohibition Unit says you’d get sick well before you got inebriated, something about solids.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 19, 1926: In which is revealed what offends the moral sense

Stuff I should have been talking about earlier: The Pennsylvania elections this month, specifically the Republican gubernatorial and US Senate primaries, which in this very Republican state are the only ones that matter, were tremendously corrupt and tremendously expensive. They’re being investigated by the Senate. Gifford Pinchot, term-limited out of the governor’s office, lost the Republican primary for US Senate to Rep. William Scott Vare, but I’m sure there’ll be no hard feelings. American Federation of Labour Pres. William Green is pissed that someone forged a letter of him endorsing John Stuchell Fisher for governor; the Fisher campaign paid for an ad in the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times featuring the forgery.

A NYT editorial thinks the candidates (at least Pepper & Vare) were unaware of what was going on, placing the blame on the donors: “what offends the moral sense [is] the spirit in which rich men set out to win a political contest by means of long purses. ... the callous indifference, the sublime unconsciousness of doing anything wrong ... The real Pennsylvania scandal is the fact that Pennsylvania did not seem to know that it was doing anything scandalous.”

The leader of last month’s coup in Portugal, Gen. Manuel Gomes da Costa, fires Adm. José Mendes Cabeçadas, who the coup leaders appointed president & prime minister. Gomes da Costa will take both posts as well as minister of war. Martial law is declared.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 18, 1926: Excessive offensive American propaganda is the worst kind of propaganda

Spanish Foreign Minister José de Yanguas says Spain will withdraw from the League of Nations since it turned out to be “an organization of war.”

Brown University is no longer Baptist; trustees and the U. president will no longer be required to be Baptist.

Australian censors ban King Vidor’s film The Big Parade for “excessive offensive American propaganda.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 17, 1926: Not everyone loves a parade

More voters in Ridgewood, New Jersey cast ballots in a referendum on a “mutt ordinance” which drops the inoculation requirement but bans unvaccinated dogs outside unless muzzled than voted in the congressional, Assembly or coroner races. The mutt ordinance passes. In other news, “mutt ordinance” is just fun to say. Mutt ordinance mutt ordinance mutt ordinance.

The Soviet Union has supposedly made a grant of $10,000 to the Pasteur Institute in French Guinea for an attempt at artificial hybridization of the human and anthropoid species, to prove evolution. Um, okay. This news comes from Detroit lawyer Howell England of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (if you were wondering what comes after Alcoholics Anonymous and the American Automobile Association), who says Dr. F. G. (Francis Graham) Crookshank, author of The Mongol in Our Midst, thinks orangutans can breed with the yellow race, gorillas with the black race, and chimps with the white race, producing fertile hybrids.

Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City refuses the Ku Klux Klan a parade permit. He says their demonstrations usually lead to rioting. Mayor Harvey Kistler of Niles, Ohio also refuses to issue kluxers a parade permit.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 16, 1926: Had I fired I should not have missed

American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, who lived most of her life in France, dies at 82. Do the words “created a type of sturdy wholesomeness and naturalness” make you eager to seek out her work?

Another death of note: Catherine Evans, 91 or possibly 81, an actress who played the maid in “Our American Cousin” the night Lincoln was shot and therefore witnessed the assassination..

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand and his Cabinet resign, as was the custom (this was his 9th or 11th or something premiership, who can keep count), because of the franc’s fall.

The Coast Guard fires on the yacht of millionaire Arthur Curtiss James (the NYT identifies him as a former commodore, without noting that his commodorial service was in the New York Yacht Club) in the Long Island Sound, mistaking it in the fog for a rum-runner.

Not sure when the duel between Poland’s former PM Count Aleksander Skrzyński and Gen. Count Stanisław Szeptycki changed from the planned sword fight to pistols at 15 paces. The general fires first, missing, but Skrzyński refuses to shoot. “I shall not resort to this stupid, inconclusive and barbaric method of settling a quarrel which has been forced upon me.” He slightly undercuts this by adding “Had I fired I should not have missed. But I don’t care to do so.” By the way, the general tried to avoid the duel which he provoked, but was forced to go through with it by a “court of honor,” which is a thing.

The estate of the late Lucien Warner is much reduced because of write-offs as the result of the decline in popularity of the product his firm manufactured, corsets.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 15, 1926: Boy, there’s a Brazilian joke here somewhere

Headline of the Day -100:

Some dude named Gary, probably. 

Brazil does indeed resign from the League of Nations, effective in two years by LoN rules.

Catherine Scott, who planned to raise funds for her husband’s insanity defense by fasting in a glass cage, is stopped by the police under a law forbidding the exhibition of the results of crime.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 14, 1926: Of army chiefs, falling ceilings and parades

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who led that coup in Poland, cements his power-behind-the-throne position, being granted the status of Commander in Chief of the Armies for life rather than War Minister, so not removable by the government or Parliament or anybody.

The White House roof is in danger of falling down, Coolidge’s church’s plaster is falling down, and the movie theater in which that church is now holding services also has pieces come crashing down during services. Someone is trying to tell Coolidge something.

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia (have we heard Trump say the word semiquincentennial yet?), the governors of the original 13 colonies will meet today and watch a parade. But is there even a cage match?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 13, 1926: Of escape schemes, fasters, voting ages, and buttons

Charles Ponzi, who was supposed to be reporting to prison, has disappeared.

Mexico bans teachers & professors from participating in politics.

While her husband Russell Scott’s mental state is being evaluated in Chicago to determine if he can be executed for killing a drug store clerk during a hold-up (he was found insane, then he was found sane, and now there’ll be another hearing), wife Catherine is raising funds by fasting in a glass cage and charging admission.

The Bavarian Diet raises the voting age for state & local elections to 25, the Judiciary Committee asserting that youths take little or no interest in politics until they have family responsibilities. The voting age for federal elections, which is set by the federal government, remains at 21.

At the annual Mennonite conference, the younger generation call for end to the ban on buttons.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 12, 1926: Of smuggling, strike funds, chimneys, and opium

An American Express employee tries to smuggle 13 ancient paintings out of Italy in the baggage of Cardinal Bonzano, who the smugglers figured wouldn’t notice that he was now traveling with 24 trunks instead of 23. The cardinal is “evidently annoyed at the attempt to use the Vatican mission to defraud the Italian Government.”

Britain complains to the Soviet Union about it having sent funds to support the General Strike™. They’re still sending money to the striking miners, so there may be another jolly stern note about that. The Soviet government replies that it has never contributed to any British strike funds, neglecting to add that it’s official Soviet unions which are doing so. The secretary of the miners’ union points out that American miners have also sent money but no one’s bitching about that.

The Coolidges will delay White House repairs, which will necessitate the family moving out, until next March when Congress disbands, despite the imminent danger of the roof falling on their heads. Cal wants civilian engineers to look at it because “army engineers would want to tear down the White House to repair a  chimney.”

India will end the export of opium, except for medical purposes, by stages by 1935.

Rabies is spreading in the Moscow region.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 11, 1926: Of prohibition and Fascists fashing

House Republicans don’t plan to move forward at this time with the Coolidge Admin’s bill to tighten Prohibition enforcement and penalties.

Fascist Italy closes all local news agencies, leaving just 2 or 3 of “proved moral and financial integrity.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 10, 1926: Why bother with the roof when a big beautiful ballroom is so desperately needed?

The Coolidges will have to vacate the White House for at least 6 months while the roof is replaced. It hasn’t been decided where they’ll be living during that period.

One result of the coup in Poland: deposed former PM Count Aleksander Skrzyński will fight a duel, with sabers and everything, with Gen. Count Stanisław Szeptycki, who refused to shake hands at the Cracow Club. Except the general’s seconds reversed their acceptance of the duel, so now he’ll be fighting those two seconds and his own seconds. Which is a lot of duels.

Rep. W.J. Sears (D-Florida) narrowly defeats a primary challenge from Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 9, 1926: Of liberties, bunk, and smoking

Cook County (Chicago) Sheriff Peter Hoffman begins a one-month contempt-of-court sentence for having, in his role in running the county jail, granted special liberties to gangsters Terry “Machine Gun” Druggan and Frankie Lake. I’m not sure what those liberties were besides being allowed to come and go from the jail, but that seems like kind of a big one. Alliterative Warden Wesley Westbrook, who like Hoffman took large bribes from the Valley Gang, will also go to jail, and yes, it’s the same jail. In fact, Hoffman will still be sheriff while incarcerated, presumably with authority over the jail, but he’ll resign in December. 

NY Supreme Court Justice Aaron Levy grants an injunction against the citizens’ play jury order that The Bunk of 1926, a musical revue written by Gene Lockhart (father of June Lockhart and performed as the second Willie Loman in the original run of Death of a Salesman) be closed because it is “incurably objectionable.” The jury has no legal power to close a play, but their ruling resulted in Actors’ Equity banning its actors performing in it. Producer Ramsey Wallace points out that 8 of the 11 jurors “are named in the Social Register and they take it upon themselves to decide arbitrarily what the masses shall see and approve.” The play will close on the 19th, it’s not clear why, or indeed what was so incurably objectionable.

Gen. Erich von Ludendorff’s wife Margarethe recently filed for divorce. He responds, blaming the breakdown of their marriage on her smoking. He thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to smoke.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 8, 1926: Of councils and the integrity of the entire Constitution

Brazil, pissed at not getting a permanent seat on the League of Nations Council, stops participating in the League and is threatening to pull out altogether. Spain may follow.

A gathering of Dry groups (the Prohibition Party, the Anti-Saloon League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, etc) pick former 1-term Republican member of the NY State Senate Franklin Cristman to run against US Sen. James Wadsworth (R). Cristman telegraphs back his acceptance, saying there should be one candidate who stands for the integrity of the entire Constitution, meaning of course the 18th Amendment.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 7, 1926: It’s not his fault and he is a poor man

Meyer London, three-time Socialist member of Congress, is hit by a car and dies at Bellevue at 54. His last concern is that the driver (who had taken him to the hospital) not be punished: “It’s not his fault and he is a poor man.”

In other car accident news, Hugo Eckener, head of the Zeppelin Company, gets in a crash in Berlin (oh the humanity). Heyward Cutting, who introduced the automobile to Mongolia, dies when his tire bursts on Long Island. And King George V and Queen Mary’s “royal car” knocks down a woman bicyclist. “The King afterward sent a messenger to inquire about her condition.” Didn’t drive her home though.

Cannibalism in Siberia?

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 6, 1926: Those who like that sort of thing

David Lloyd George says in a speech at the Manchester Reform Club, “I have no intention to accept my dismissal from the Liberal Party.”

French scientist Charles Henry claims to have worked out the laws of catalysis and says he’ll soon figure out how to run cars on water.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 5, 1926: Easy To Reach, Hard To Leave

French Prime Minister Aristide Briand tells the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress he is a “convinced feminist.” Briand is a bachelor, the NYT points out.

Westchester County, NY has a contest for a new slogan. The $100 winner comes up with “Easy To Reach, Hard To Leave.” Some Westchesterhoovians point out that this might bring to mind that one of the delights at their county is Sing Sing.

The US embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed a couple of weeks ago. Now, it’s the turn of the Legation in Montevideo. Both are believed to be means of registering objections to the death sentences on Sacco and Vanzetti, although I haven’t seen strong evidence of that.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 4, 1926: I thought every one would realize that it was only fiction

The Senate Judiciary subcommittee that held all those hearings on prohibition recommends shelving every single bill introduced to modify the Volstead Act or to modify or repeal the 18th Amendment, and it says there’s no legal authority for holding a national referendum on Prohibition.

In 1924 The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in the Year 1764-5, by Cleone Knox, Edited by Her Kinsman and Descendant, Alexander Blacker Kerr, was published, an account by a young lady of her travels Europe and her scandalous love life in the 18th Century. Widely praised for offering insight into the period, it turns out the book was a hoax, perpetrated by Magdalen King-Hall, the then 19-year-old daughter of Adm. Sir George Fowler King-Hall. “I thought every one would realize that it was only fiction,” she says. No one did. She went on to write many other novels.

The Esperanto Congress in Madrid offers a cash prize for the best translation of Don Quixote into Esperanto.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 3, 1926: Of maimed veterans and casinos

Congress recently passed the sensitively named Maimed Veterans Act, which leads the Pension Bureau to check its records and turn up a 79-year-old Civil War vet who’s been paid under the rates for slightly disabled veterans instead of completely blind ones (he caught some eye disease on sentry duty in 1864). He’ll get the additional benefits going forward and the ones he should have gotten since 1904.

Former kaiser Wilhelm objects to his palace on Corfu, which was confiscated by Greece during the Great War but which he says he still owns, being turned into a casino. It will actually not become a casino except in a James Bond film.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 2, 1926: Of intellectual freedoms and animal dogmas

Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George is more or less expelled from the Liberal Party by H.H. Asquith (aka the Earl of Oxford and Asquith) for having written a letter during the General Strike™ that was a little more sympathetic to the strikers than the Liberal leaders, who backed the Baldwin government’s hard-line position. Asquith is claiming that LG’s failure to attend a meeting of the Shadow Cabinet amounted to a resignation.

Ignacy Mościcki is elected president of Poland following Józef Piłsudski’s refusal of the post yesterday. He’ll be a sock-puppet president for the military until 1939.

The Tennessee Supreme Court hears the appeal of the Scopes Monkey Trial conviction. Clarence Darrow calls for the “intellectual freedom of man,” while K.T. McConnico, for the state, calls on the Court to resist “sinister and unclean” efforts to teach “this animal dogma.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: June 1, 1926: Antifa New York City 1926

The Polish National Assembly elects coup leader Gen. Józef Piłsudski president, but he declines, for now. The idea seems to be that he wants the office to be granted dictatorial powers before he graciously consents to take it.

A Memorial Day parade in NYC is immediately followed by a parade, in black shirts, no less, of the Fascio Benito Mussolini (that’s an organization), which has a permit and everything. The Fascists are booed and jeered by onlookers, some of them are of Italian extraction. Police attack the anti-fascists.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 31, 1926: Of coups, rich people, maledict courses, bands & bobs

The coup in Portugal succeeds in ousting the government, which resigns. There is supposedly no bloodshed. The coupsters say they want to form a democratic government (Spoiler Alert: they won’t) and save the country from politicians.

In front-page rich people with rich-people names dying while doing rich-people things news, NY banker Royall Victor drops dead while yacht-racing and NY insurance dude Elbridge Gerry Snow III is in a coma (from which he won’t recover) after a polo accident.

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho), who hopes to ride a Prohibitionist wave into the White House in ‘28, addressing the Presbyterian General Assembly in Baltimore, attacks the states like New York which have no state law for Prohibition enforcement. “Whether sold in the open saloon or the brothel, its natural haunt, or secretly purveyed in defiance of law, the wicked stuff works its demoralization and ruin to individuals, communities and states. ... From the time it issues from the coiled and copper-colored worm in the distillery until it empties in the hell of crime, dishonor and death, misery and poverty and remorse mark its maledict course.” And people ignoring the dry law, whoa: “To disregard our Constitution, to evade it, to nullify it, while still refusing to change it, is to plant the seeds of destruction in the heart of the nation, is to confess before the world that we have neither the moral courage nor the intellectual sturdiness for self-government.” 

Germany says the Treaty of Versailles’s ban on foreign troops at the Rhine means it has to revoke permission for a Swedish military band to perform at Düsseldorf.

The big story in Kentucky this week is that a woman, Martha Bates, was sentenced to 40 days for slapping a Rev. Arlie Brown who criticized women who bob their hair. Gov. W.J. Fields defends her actions and orders her released. Bates says she told Brown that it’s not hair that makes the woman.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 30, 1926: If you do not heed what I say, you will learn to feel my switch

Marshal Józef Piłsudski tells a meeting of top Polish politicians, demanding he be given dictatorial powers, “If you do not heed what I say, you will learn to feel my switch.” He does say that they’re free to pick another candidate for president. Well, free-ish: “You can elect whom you want, but I will decide if your choice is right. If not, the street will be heard from.” As president, he would want the Diet to grant him extraordinary powers, and then suspend itself for a year.

Texas’s former governor James Ferguson calls his wife’s competitor for governor, Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, “a blowed-up sucker and a gone fawnskin.” I think he’s just making up insults now. This was at a campaign event in Sulphur Springs, at which the actual candidate, “Ma” Ferguson, read off a short speech, which was followed by her husband’s lengthy “harangue.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 29, 1926: Of coups, tests of eugenics, and bombs

A military revolt begins in Portugal.

9,000 Slovak fascists meet and swear to fight for Slovak autonomy and the Catholic church. They want only the Slovak language to be used in elementary schools.

The International Woman Suffrage Alliance refuses to allow the National Woman’s Party to join.

The city of Berlin will open a bureau to give couples advice on whether they’re healthy enough to get married and breed. “This is the first real test of the eugenics theory to be tried out in Germany.” But not the last.

Asa Bartlett, head of the Blue Lake Township, Michigan Ku Klux Klan and town constable, is arrested for sending a package bomb to the home of town Supervisor August Krubaech. The bomb killed Krubaech, his 19-year-old daughter, and her fiancé. Bartlett will serve 36 years in prison before his sentence is commuted. He will die in 1982 at 85 years old.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 28, 1926: Of bodies of representatives of different points of view, coal, pickles, and poles

Two competing American groups, the League of Women Voters and the National Woman’s Party, show up at the big International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) meeting in Paris. The League really really really doesn’t like the more radical NWP and says that the latter “is not a body of representatives of different points of view who meet to develop a common political theory,” which seems an odd argument to make about a group whose, you know, different points of view you’re trying to exclude altogether. Also, Britain, Holland, Romania & France are each already represented by multiple groups. A decision will be made tomorrow.

French suffragists hope this conference will spur the women’s suffrage cause in France. It won’t.

With the coal miners strike still going, Britain imposes rationing. Householders will need a permit to buy coal and then only 100 weight, which is the equivalent of who knows what, per fortnight. Lack of coal is limiting or shutting down factories and railways. Street lights are ordered shut off.

Headline of the Day -100:

3 cans of pickles fell on her in a New Jersey market. And for some reason her husband got $1,000.

Boy, everyone’s looking for Poles today

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 27, 1926: Of princes in prisons and rifs

Hungarian Prince Louis Windisch-Graetz is convicted in the counterfeiting-for-coups case. He and Police Chief Imre Nádosy are sentenced to 4 years and a fine of 10,000 gold crowns, which is the equivalent of some money. Both will be amnestied in 1928. Other participants receive shorter sentences.

The NYT notes that Prince Louis had a lot of fun in “the dives of New York City.”

Abd el-Krim surrenders to the French ending 5 years of war over the Rif in Morocco, first with Spain, then France. He will be exiled to Réunion for 21 years before escaping.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 26, 1926: I wished to register a moral protest

Symon Petliura, who led the breakaway Ukrainian People’s Republic created in 1917 and fought both the Russian Bolshevik regime and the Whites from 1919 before leaving for exile in Poland and then Paris, is shot in the Latin Quarter by Russian-French Yiddish poet Sholem Schwarzbard, dying later in the day. Schwarzbard explains that he acted in revenge for pogroms by Petliura’s forces which killed thousands of Jews, including some of his family. He will be acquitted next year and live in the US and South Africa, where he’ll die in 1938.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski meets American reporters. Asked why he did the coup, he says “I wished to register a moral protest.” You know, with machine guns.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: May 25, 1926: We might as well divide the State into Federal precincts at once

The Supreme Court rules unanimously in the case Corrigan v Buckley, permitting permit racial covenants in D.C. real estate deeds banning the future sale of properties to black people, keeping neighborhoods all-white and making such covenants legally enforceable. In this case, the agreement was made in 1921 among 30 families on a block of S Street NW, but the owners of number 1727 sold their house 

to a black family in 1922, pissing off the neighbors. The Court says private covenants are not prohibited by the 5th, 13th or 14th Amendments and, since they are private, the Court has no jurisdiction. In 1948 Corrigan will be reversed in  Shelley v. Kraemer, which determined (also unanimously) that racially restrictive covenants are prohibited under the 14th Amendment and not enforceable, indeed that enforcement by the state would negate the pretense that racial covenants are purely private.

Governors reply to a NYT question about Coolidge’s executive order allowing the federal government to offer state & local cops dual employment as Prohibition agents. 5 oppose it outright, 4 support it, 7 say there are legal/constitutional issues with their state cooperating, 15 say they’re still thinkin’ about it. Gov. Harry Moore of NJ (D) says “We might as well divide the State into Federal precincts at once”.

Attorney General John Sargent says that the exec. order doesn’t violate the Constitution, federal laws, or state laws. Evidently Coolidge asked for Sargent’s opinion on the legality of the E.O. only after issuing it.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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??!!

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.says

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.