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 The government says there will be no further negotiations until the strike order is withdrawn.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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Today -100: April 11, 1926: Of Daddy & Peaches

Chinese Prime Minister Duan Qirui is toppled by a coup, as was the custom.

NY real estate developer Edward West “Daddy” Browning, 51, marries Frances “Peaches” Heenan, 15. Browning had some time before advertised looking for a 14-year-old to adopt as a companion to a boy (or girl; I’ve seen it both ways) he’d adopted as one of a pair with his first wife, who then fled to Paris with her dentist, keeping the other kid. Browning likes adopting girls, some of whom were essentially sold to him by their parents. Browning met Frances at a high school sorority dance which he’d sponsored, as one does. They married to short-circuit an action in Children’s Court brought by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, during a one-week postponement granted because someone supposedly threw acid at Frances.

The happy couple (I love that guy on the left)

The millionaire didn’t tip the town clerk, the article reveals.

Anyways, they’ll separate, he’ll try to adopt a 16-year-old who will turn out to be in actuality 21, a legal adult ineligible for adoption. Peaches will have a vaudeville career and an affair with Milton Berle. And I haven’t even mentioned the African goose. There’s a book, because of course there is.

Headline of the Day -100:

How proud they must be of themselves.

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Today -100: April 10, 1926: My voyage to Libya contains no menace

Mussolini says his trip to Tripoli isn’t about threatening other European colonizers: “My voyage to Libya contains no menace.” 

There’s a very brief military coup in Greece.

Germany is demanding, not its own air force per se, but for its army officers to be allowed to train as pilots. After all, they say, flying is now considered a sport, so officers have as much a right to fly as to play golf.

British miners reject the mineowners’ proposal that they accept reduced wages and longer hours. I’m sure this can all be resolved without any unpleasantness. 

The Post Office bars the April issue of Mencken’s The American Mercury from the mails.

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Today -100: April 9, 1926: Of reapportionment and redwoods

The House of Representatives refuses, by a vote of 265 to 87, to do its constitutionally mandated duty to reapportion congressional districts following the 1920 census. Some congresscritters claim that there is no such constitutionally mandated duty.

Prohibition agents padlock a redwood tree in Humboldt County, California which someone had turned into a still.

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Today -100: April 8, 1926: Fancy, a woman!

Irishwoman Violet Gibson, 49, daughter of Lord Ashbourne, who was lord chancellor of Ireland on and off between 1885 and 1905, shoots Benito Mussolini right in his fat face, grazing his fat nose (you know that thing he did where he crosses his arms and tilts his fat head back super-smugly? that’s what saved him from the bullet entering his fat brain). Then her gun jams. This is not the first assassination attempt on The Duck, nor will it be the last, but Gibson was the only woman would-be assassin and the only one who actually succeeded in shooting him. “Fancy, a woman!” he says. The Duck calls for no disorder, but there is, of course, disorder, with Fascists attacking the remaining opposition newspapers and chanting slogans in the streets.

Annoyingly, this will just increase his popularity. Pope Pius says Moose was “spared by God.” After a year of back and forth in the Italian government over how to deal with this – portray it as a conspiracy, put her on trial, treat the whole thing as an amusing incident and put it behind them as quickly as possible, (the Duck’s approach), claim Gibson is insane (which she kinda is, just look at her eyes! LOOK AT HER EYES!),

(although, compare and contrast that image, printed in many newspapers, with this, in today’s paper

or this, as they appear now)

They’ll deport her to Britain, where she will spend the remaining 30 years of her life in an insane asylum, abandoned by her embarrassed family. There’s a biography of her, and there’s an Irish television documentary, available free on Tubi.

Capt. George Wilkins & Lt. Carl Eielson fly over the Arctic Ocean, looking for previously undiscovered land to claim for the US. They don’t find any. They plan to explore the Pole of Inaccessibility, presumably looking for Bond-villain bases.

Yet another clash between textile strikers and cops in Passaic, NJ. Small boys throw stones at the police chief’s car. The American Legion deploys on the side of the mills but are forced to flee.

Judge James Parmenter of the Boston Municipal Court acquits H.L. Mencken, saying the American Mercury does not tend to corrupt the morals of youths. He finds all the articles in it “intellectual and of serious nature,” although he just doesn’t understand the one about jazz.

A group of “fanatical university students” in Budapest are arrested for planning an armed invasion of Czechoslovakia. A “former archduke” is rumored to be involved.

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Today -100: April 7, 1926: Of Shylock nations, quacks, shonks, pretenders, werewolves?, and sex magazines

Fascists in Venice, pissed at the US Senate’s delays in passing the war debt settlement and at Sen. William Borah’s comments during the debate about Fascist violence in Italy, attack sailors from US destroyers. In the Piazza San Marco, Fascists call one sailor “a fat swine and the representative of a Shylock nation.” The four destroyers abruptly leave Venice, possibly pursued by Fascist gondoliers.

There’s a movement to “boom” Columbia University Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler for the Republican nomination for governor of New York. They think an opponent of Prohibition like him is the party’s best chance, or to put it another way, that Prohibition may be a decisive issue in 1926.

The New York Legislature passes a bill requiring physicians to be registered every year. There is a problem, or at least a panic, over “quack” doctors.

The New York State Assembly rejects the Shonk Bill for a 48-hour week for women and minors. Women are currently limited to 54 hours.

Herbert Shonk is my new favorite name.

A “congress” of Russian exiles in Paris chooses Grand Duke Nicholas, the first cousin once removed of the late Czar Nicholas, to lead the “glorious task of liberating our country.” He replies that it is the poor oppressed Russian people who “have the right to establish the basis of their existence.” In other words, start without me.

Elsewhere, Prince Jean, Duke of Guise takes over as the new pretender to the French throne from the Orléanist line, following the death of Prince Louis Philippe. He did have the option of renouncing the “title” and thus avoid having to leave France under the 1886 law exiling the heads of the 3 overthrown royal lines, but he boldly steps up, saying “I lay claim to all his [Louis Philippe’s] rights...” Of which there are none. “I assume all the responsibilities...” Of which there are none. “and I accept all the duties...” Of which there are none. “...of that position.” He will call himself King Philip VIII. He is married to his cousin, because of course he is.

In Berlin on Easter Monday, Communists and Werewolves fight over a café, which is probably not as entertaining as it sounds and which leads to one death and one wrecked café. In Munich, police break up Communist conferences.

H.L. Mencken counter-sues Franklin Chase over his arrest for selling an issue of the American Mercury. He informs the judge that the Merc is not a sex magazine, which makes you wonder – or is it just me? – what a sex magazine edited by H.L. Mencken would be like.

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Today -100: April 6, 1926: Malicious prosecutions are the funnest kind of prosecution

Former New Mexico governor Washington Ellsworth Lindsey, which is not a very New-Mexico-governor sort of name, kills  himself, possibly due to illness. His obit very nearly spells his name correctly.

H.L. Mencken is arrested on Boston Common, in a pre-arranged test case/publicity move, for selling an issue of The American Mercury to Franklin Chase of the Watch and Ward Society, who has been trying to get the Merc prosecuted and banned from the mails at least since it published an article, “Keeping the Puritans Pure” by A. L. S. Wood, of which he was the subject, although the court case will be about the article “Hatrack” by Herbert Asbury, which is about the hypocrisy of small towns towards “harlots” and is sadly free of “obscenity,” if you ask me.

Former Kansas governor Jonathan Davis, acquitted on charges of selling pardons, sues three Kansas City newspapers, various editors and reporters, prison guards, a highwayman, and a bank wrecker, for libel and malicious prosecution.

At the 96th annual conference of the Mormons, Mormon Pres. Heber Grant warns against immodest skirts and afternoon teas.

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Today -100: April 5, 1926: Looks like I’ll have to run

Austria’s Supreme Court abolishes stage censorship.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, now “cleared” of having sold pardons, says “Looks like I’ll have to run” for governor again.

Mussolini will visit the Italian colony Tripoli. He’s going there on a warship. The Fascist paper Popolo d’Italia, which translates, I believe, as The Poppadom of Italy, says the ship recalls the ships of the Punic Wars: “It is a spectacle of force, not a parade; it is a majestic sign of greatness, not the order of the day in a debating hall.” This excursion is supposed to show the unified nature of the new Italy, putting aside petty regional squabbles in favor of oppressing people in Africa like a big boy nation. Later this month there’ll be a National Colonial Day.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot warns state employees not to campaign against his candidacy for US Senate, or else.

A secret meeting last week of royalists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Russia agreed to establish a monarchist international.

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Today -100: April 4, 1926: If you’re being bribed by a forger, inspect the bag o’ cash very carefully

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis and his son Russell are acquitted for the second time for taking a $1,250 bribe to pardon a forger. One wonders what the juries were thinking.

Communal fighting in Calcutta, which was set off by Hindu Samajists invading a mosque, kills at least a dozen. So far.

Italian organ grinders, some of them with monkeys, have left the streets of London in droves, following the order of Mussolini, who thinks they harm Italian prestige. Their, um, jobs have been filled by crippled & blind war veterans.

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Today -100: April 3, 1926: Of prohibition, slander, and studying communism

Against a rising feeling that Prohibition enforcement is already going too far, an amendment to the Volstead Act is introduced in the US Senate at the behest of Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the head of the federal Prohibition agents, increasing penalties and seizures for various booze crimes, and more controversially allowing dry cops to break into people’s houses that have stills...

(https://theonion.com/dhs-ice-can-enter-homes-without-pants/)

Chicago radio announcer Philip Friedlander is fined $25 in the very first radio slander case for falsely broadcasting that State’s Attorney Robert Crowe was seen entering the Moulin Rouge cabaret.

California Attorney Gen. Ulysses Sigel Webb rules that schoolchildren can’t be asked to write essays about Communism, because that would force them to research the subject.

I wonder how many parents naming their kid after Gen. Grant (Webb was born in 1864) had to decide for themselves what the S. should stand for, since in Grant’s case it didn’t stand for anything (and his real first name was Hiram), and how many of those parents chose “Sigel.”

One of my resentments about Grant and Harry S. Truman is that they insisted on putting a period after the S., signifying an abbreviation when there was no actual abbreviation.

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Today -100: April 2, 1926: Of bankruptcy rings and bathtubs

George W. English, a Wilson appointee to the District Court for the Eastern District of Illinois, is impeached by the House of Representatives for high misdemeanors (that’s the worst kind of misdemeanor), abuse of power (“tyranny and oppression”). Something about a “bankruptcy ring.” It’s kind of obscure to me. And to the congresscritters. At one point their vote on one of the charges is walked back because they didn’t understand what they were voting on. At one point John Rankin (D-Miss.) and Ogden Mills (R-NY) get into a slanging match and a near-fistfight. Rankin later denies having used what is described only as a “highly insulting term,” saying “I would not call any white man what I had in mind.”

Theatre producer Earl Carroll is arrested for perjury for denying that at a party he threw for Harry Thaw, the killer of Stanford White, a naked woman swam on the stage of his theatre in a bathtub full of “alleged wine,” as was the custom.

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Today -100: April 1, 1926: 21 nuns, no waiting

The House Foreign Affairs Committee hears “evidence” that 21 Carmelite nuns who were illegally teaching religion in Mexico were arrested and threatened with being sold to bordellos.

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Today -100: March 31, 1926: Follow the dotted line

Democrats in the Senate plan to block ratification of the war debt repayment deal with Italy until after the mid-terms, considering it overly generous. Reed Smoot (R-Utah), opposing the rejection of the deal, says “I do not want to see Italy exhausted.”

Vera, Countess Cathcart sails for England. Her play having failed, she plans to try to make money writing about her immigration problems in the US.

France resumes sending prisoners to Devil’s Island, 340 of them. Captain Louis Grenet of the prison ship La Martinière (which the NYT amusingly misnames La Mariniere, which is the name of those French blue & white stripey shirts) charmingly declares that there’s no risk of mutiny: “Hot steam from ten pumps into the cages soon melts any revolt.” One of the prisoners, whose sentence of death by the guillotine had been commuted by the president, has a tattoo around his neck: “Executioner, when cutting, follow the dotted line.”

Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey have a second son, Sydney, less than 11 months after Charles Jr. was born. Lita has yet to reach her 18th birthday.

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Today -100: March 30, 1926: Of censors and fasters

The League of Nations Advisory Commission on Child Welfare wants to establish movie censorship boards, one in each country.

Berlin hunger artist “Jolly” ends his public fast after 44 days. Quitter. 44 days is a record for “professionals,” as opposed to starving people.

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Today -100: March 29, 1926: Of pretenders, bread, loop the loops, and glaciers

Obit of the Day -100: Prince Louis Philippe, who had been the pretender to the French throne since 1894 for the Orléanist royal line, dies of pneumonia at 57 in Sicily. His great-grandfather was deposed by the 1848 revolution. Exiled from France more than once, LP was imprisoned when he tried to return to offer to do his military service. He filled his time never being king by serving in the British army; trying to join the French, Russian, Belgian and Italian armies; hunting; climbing mountains in Tibet; being an anti-Dreyfusard; getting named in multiple divorce cases (the dude, sorry, Duke, liked to fuck). It was a busy life but a useless one.

Americans are eating less bread, partly because home baking is declining. Also, sliced bread hasnt been invented yet (it will in a couple of years).

Aviatrix Sophie Elliot-Lynn (whose name was seemingly never spelled the same way twice) loops the loop, the first woman to do so in Britain. She also does a spinning nosedive and other stunts. She scoffs at the thought that all this shit is dangerous: “Airplanes have been brought to such perfection that there is little danger.” She will have a minor crash in 1929 but it will be a fall down the stairs of a London tram that will kill her in 1939.

A group of US and Canadian scientists apply to the Danish government to go to Greenland with some thermite to blow up glaciers to clear the sea routes and because it would be cool.

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Today -100: March 28, 1926: Of cursed tombs, downing pens, furniture, highest destinies, and horsies and buggies

Georges Bénédite, Egyptologist and curator of the Louvre, dies in Luxor, the 6th victim of the Vengeance of Tutankhamen™.

A playwrights’ strike is averted. Their beef with producers had something to do with musical numbers being performed by bands.

Grace Coolidge, redecorating the White House in early Colonial style, appeals to the nation for free furniture. See, that sort of furniture “cannot be purchased” because it is handed down generation to generation, so people should stop doing that and instead donate it, free, to the White House.  (The White House will deny asking for free furniture, but I notice it took several days for them to do so).

The textile strikers in Passaic, NJ (yes, the strike is still going on) call for the arrest of  Chief of Police Richard Zober and 12 other cops for assault. Of course an arrest warrant was already issued 3 weeks ago, but no one could be prevailed upon to serve it. The ACLU is threatening civil suits. 

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross tells some Girl Scouts that freedom for women is great and everything, but “I am old-fashioned enough, however, to believe that no career is as glorious or satisfying as that which wifehood and motherhood offers, and it is there she fulfills her highest destiny.”

Chicago mayoral election news: the Post Office is unable to find 50,000 addresses of registered voters, presumably fake ones. And Mayor Big Bill Thompson and his competitor, State’s Attorney Robert Crowe, both file libel actions against The Chicago Evening Post for reporting that they’d gotten into a fist fight. They say they didn’t (a likely story).

In 1881, Sheriff S. Foster Black arrested “Edwin Turner” for stealing a horse and buggy in Binghamton. Turner then escaped from the Broome County, New Jersey jail, going out the window on a rope tied from sheets, as was the custom, was re-captured and then, while being transported, escaped from a train via, what else, the bathroom window. Now, 45 years later, Black, who is now a 91-year-old deputy sheriff (and was the one who allowed him to use that bathroom), spots a newspaper picture of one Edwin Turner Osbaldeston, who claims to be the oldest survivor of the Crimean War, so Black arrests him yet again. Osbaldeston, 93, is a retired doctor in Ashbury Park. He claims this is a case of mistaken identity and that he has never been in Binghamton in his life (a likely story).

George Hir, Hungarian deputy from the fascist Awakening Hungarians party, dies from poisoning. His wife denies that it was a suicide, insisting he was murdered by the Doublecross League of Blood, something related to the fascist plot to counterfeit French francs to finance a coup.

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Today -100: March 27, 1926: Beloved or feared and respected by all

Sen. Walter Edge (R-NJ) introduces a resolution for a referendum in every state on modifying prohibition to permit less boozy booze. For some reason, this would be on the 1928 rather than the 1926 ballot.

Mussolini celebrates the 7th anniversary of the Fascist movement with “the severe discipline of the strong.” “At home the government has solved formidable problems with the consent of the people, while opposition of all sorts was dispersed.” Because nothing says consent like dispersing opposition of all sorts. The Moose continues, Trumpily: “Abroad Fascist Italy is beloved or feared and respected by all, in spite of the impotent maneuvers of the old and outcast political parties we have definitely wiped out.”

Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s daughter, announces that she is considering running for the Florida Legislature. She won’t; she’ll run for the US Congress instead. She’ll lose, but she’ll win in 1928.

The Holy Synod in Moscow, which rules the Red faction of the Russian Orthodox Church, will abolish monasticism. Monks will be required to take up some useful profession.

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Today -100: March 26, 1926: Of fake Spanish women, real miracles, former royals, and castor-oil and rubber-club adolescences

Luis Fernando / Luigi Ferdinando d'Orléans, a French AND Spanish prince who was expelled from France for “bad conduct” in 1924 and then stripped of his Spanish princely privileges, is arrested by customs officials on the Spanish/Portuguese border (the article doesn’t specify which country’s officials) on suspicion of smuggling (nor does it specify what he was smuggling), disguised as a Spanish woman.

Headline of the Day -100:

(The article does not explain what the hell he’s talking about).

12.5 million signatures have been collected in Germany for a plebiscite on confiscating without compensation the properties of all the former royal families. That’s enough signatures to force the holding of the plebiscite.

The NYT says that Mussolini isn’t getting blowback from the Matteotti trial because he’s successfully ascribed the 1924 murder to an earlier phase of Fascism. “The movement has outgrown its castor-oil and rubber-club adolescence.”

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Today -100: March 25, 1926: Guilty guilty guilty

The trial for the murder of Giacomo Matteotti ends with 2 of the defendants acquitted and 3 found guilty of unintentional murder. Amerigo Dumini, Albino Volpi and Ameleto Poveromo (whose name in his Italian Wikipedia article is translated by my web browser as Hamlet the Poor Man) are sentenced to nearly 6 years, but will get the benefit of time served and an amnesty law for political murders and be out in a couple of months. Dumini and Hamlet the Poor Man will be re-tried after World War II and get longer sentences. Dumini will electrocute himself while changing a lightbulb in 1967.

The New Jersey Hotel Men’s Association is fighting a bill in the NJ Lege which would allow black people denied service in hotels, theatres, restaurants, etc to sue for $500.

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Today -100: March 24, 1926: I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life

The Reichstag defeats a motion of no confidence in Chancellor Hans Luther 259 to 141 after Luther tells them that the Locarno treaties form the basis of his policies. The debate features the debut speech of Grand Adm. Alfred von Tirpitz, the unrestricted-submarine-warfare guy from the last war, who says Locarno and the League of Nations would bring Germany “into complete dependency on France,” adding, “but not in some kinky sexual way.” He may not have said the last bit.

In the British Parliament, Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain survives a resolution brought by former PM David Lloyd George to reduce his salary (by how much is not specified here) after a vote of 325 to 136. Chamberlain’s speech was marked by “ill-temper” and “a feeling of self-satisfaction,” was “conspicuous for length rather than clearness, for acidity of tone rather than power of argument.” Former PM Ramsay MacDonald says “I never heard a more self-complacent speech in my life.” Everyone’s a critic.

At the Matteotti trial, the lawyers for 3 of the accused say that Matty totally brought it on himself by not surrendering after the Fascists “conquered” but continued to “torment” the poor Fascists until they could take it no more. Part of this blame-the-victim approach is to assert that they killed him because he was a nasty person and not because he was an MP; there’s a special penalty for people who murder MPs.

is a claim I’m pretty sure we’ve seen a few times before.

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Today -100: March 23, 1926: When Irish elves are smiling

The NY State Senate kills bills to restore state enforcement of Prohibition.

Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes of Love opens on Broadway, with the countess playing the lead role. The audience found it “dull” and laughed in all the wrong places, according to the NYT. She evidently sucks as both a playwright and an actor.

Mysterious “elfin” music is heard near Milltown, Ireland.  Hundreds have traveled thence to catch a glimpse of the elves.

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