Today -100: October 22, 1926: Of milk and (joke I could only write if I looked up the lyrics to that song, which I won’t do)

The lab that NY gubernatorial candidate Rep. Ogden Mills has been citing to prove that milk in New York City is bad and adulterated and icky says the samples it analyzed show “nothing deleterious,” although they won’t show anyone the reports they made at the behest of Mills and the R. party. Mills says he’ll only show it while testifying at a Grand Jury; I guess he’ll just keep any information about the alleged great milk danger under his hat until then.

The Soviet Union expels H.D. Anderson, the last American YMCA person left in the country.

Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, is published, with 5,090 copies printed.

At the Princess Theatre in Montreal, a McGill student punches Harry Houdini in the stomach.

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

Today -100: October 21, 1926: I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world

Eugene Debs, perennial Socialist candidate for president and occasional political prisoner, dies at 70 of health issues not unrelated to his time in prison.

Yes, I chose this picture because of that tie.

“In a speech devoted for the most part to milk,” Ogden Mills, R. candidate for governor of NY, says the milk is adulterated in Manhattan as well as boroughs he’s previously named. I have no idea if this is true, but it’s certainly having a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-type effect on parents’ willingness to feed milk to their children.

The NYT says “many” women are running for the Legislature, “many” in this case meaning 15 candidates for the 150 Assembly seats and 3 for the 51 State Senate seats. The senate candidates are all socialists, as are 8 of the Assembly candidates (2 are from the Workers’ Party) and US Senate candidate Jessie Wallace Hughan. The article names exactly one (1) of these women, incumbent Assemblycritter Rhoda Fox Graves (R).

Headline of the Day -100:

Yay! Peace in our time!

Germany: the prosecutor of two reactionaries who plotted to assassinate Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann last year recommends they be acquitted. Kaltdorff, a follower of Hitler, says it was all just a hoax, that he was collecting material for a novel, and that that letter he wrote to his lawyer, who turned it over to the cops, was a joke he wrote while super-drunk, but he did repeat that Stresemann was a traitor. So they’re released, because far-right crimes don’t count.

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

Today -100: October 20, 1926: Of forbud

Norway votes for a referendum ending the 1917 prohibition imposed by decree and confirmed in a 1919 referendum. Since then, smuggling from Germany has sprung up, much of it captained by former u-boat officers though, sadly, just using regular boats.

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

Today -100: October 19, 1926: We do not even think of it. Why should we?

Headline of the Day -100:

First it was booze, then milk, now water. This election is very liquid-themed.

Queen Marie of Romania is visiting New York, and the Times will not shut up about it.

At an imperial conference in London, Canadian PM Mackenzie King says “Any talk of the annexation of Canada by the United States is purely political and should not be taken seriously.” “[I]t is the last thing Canada is worrying about. Nobody there really talks about it; nobody wants it, and personally I haven’t encountered a single soul in Canada who has ever mentioned it. We do not even think of it. Why should we?”

At the preparatory meeting for the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, France proposes that countries that use gas during warfare should be punished by a massive air chemical attack on them by all countries signing the ban on such weapons. The US, Germany, Italy and Japan oppose this idea but Belgium, Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia support it.

Colorado Republicans claim the state’s D’s are linked with the Ku Klux Klan. Their evidence is laughable.

Headline of the Day -100:

The NYT’s long habit of citing the opinions of randos (a shoemaker in this case) about the Soviet Union has not abated.

The Texas Legislature committee investigating the Fergusons hears that the governor’s husband told road contractors he could secure maintenance contracts for them in exchange for c.10%. Ferguson denies it.

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

Today -100: October 18, 1926: I would not even advise my wife

Headline of the Day -100:

Along with Zinoviev, Kamenev, etc. They confess to conduct calculated to split the Communist Party and to violating party discipline.  They promise to obey the Central Committee in the future without any of that pesky expression of unapproved ideas. “We categorically repudiate the theory and practice of the freedom of forming groups and factions.”

Max Eastman finally publishes Lenin’s hitherto secret Testament criticizing Stalin, whose people have been denying it existed.

NY gubernatorial candidate Rep. Ogden Mills says he will personally vote yes on the referendum to modify Prohibition but he won’t advise voters to do the same; “I would not even advise my wife.”

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

Today -100: October 17, 1926: Equal rights are all we are asking

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover, in a speech for senatorial candidate James Wadsworth, says a Democratic-controlled Senate would cripple the Coolidge Admin’s work. “If our opponents shall be returned at this election, our legislative branch comes into conflict with the Executive, and we shall have neither party responsible and no direction of any sort.” In other words, he’s calling for one-party government. 

After that string of retaliatory mob shootings, Chicago politicians ask for a pause in violence during the elections. One of Al Capone’s lieutenants says they’re fine with that as long as the politicians make the North Side Gang “behave.” “Equal rights are all we are asking.”

“That wild beast called anti-Semitism,” as Soviet Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunatcharsky calls it, seems to be raising its wild head in Russia, and the government is trying to put a stop to it. Lunatcharsky says the cause of it is the fear of the middle classes and intelligentsia of competition from Jews, with their high intellect, ability, and enterprise. There are plans to colonize 200,000 Jews in the Crimea and, to try to head off a reaction rooted in the traditional Ukrainian peasant anti-Semitism, grant other lands to Ukrainians.

8 states – NY, Wisc., Nev., Ill., Colo., Missouri, Montana, California – will vote on Prohibition next month, some on modifying the Volstead Act, some (CA, Colo., Mont., Missouri) on eliminating state-level enforcement.

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

Today -100: October 16, 1926: Of milk, royals, and jury fees

Ogden Mills claims that adulterated milk is flooding New York City, even Queens & the Bronx. He evidently thinks this is the issue he can ride into the governor’s mansion, I guess.

More fighting in the Prussian Diet as it ratifies the deal giving the former royal family enough money and property to make them the richest family in Germany, if not Europe. The Communists are not best pleased. Their deputy Wilhelm Kasper steals the large brass bell normally used to call for order and rings it whenever the president of the Diet tries to use a smaller, until Kasper is thrown out. The Socialists sit the whole thing out, abstaining from the vote and the fisticuffs. 

In a Kansas City court case in which a black man stands accused of “cussing out” a black woman, the jury refuses to give its verdict until it’s paid its $1 fee, for which they’d ordinarily have to wait until next month. So the judge locks them up while he goes to lunch, allowing them only bread and water.

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

Today -100: October 15, 1926: Of libs, Germans, and souls

Herbert Asquith (aka Lord Reading and Asquith) resigns as leader of Britain’s Liberal Party after months of squabbling with David Lloyd George, to whom he is now ceding the field.

The new Czech Cabinet will include ethnic Germans – Sudeten Germans, if you will – for the first time. Robert Mayr-Harting will be justice minister and Franz Spina will be public works minister.

Thomas Edison thinks there might be such a thing as an immortal soul after all. He suggests religious teachers look for genuine evidence, but does not suggest how they should do that.

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

Today -100: October 14, 1926: A recruiting film?

The Rhode Island Republican Convention calls for Prohibition to be put to a new referendum (but with strict enforcement until then).

Vice President Charles Dawes’s call for the abolition of primaries and a return to nominating conventions is not going over well with some Republican leaders.

Lon Chaney’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is still banned in Britain, not because of its content but because when the film arrived in Southampton last year, it was given a military escort by Territorials who were tricked into thinking it was a recruiting film.

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, introducing the title character, is published simultaneously in Britain and the US (it was Disney which viciously stripped him of his hyphens).

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

Today -100: October 13, 1926: There’s enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street

Dr. Alfred Salter, Labour MP for Bermondsey, says he’s seen many MPs drunk in the House of Commons chamber, from all parties but especially Tories. He says maybe Parliament having its own bars is not such a good idea.

Al Capone is questioned about yesterday’s machine-gunnery by the befuddled Chicago PD but is not under arrest. He tells a reporter “there’s enough business for all of us without killing each other like animals in the street, but they don’t see it.”

Yugoslavia, whose navy consists of a single light cruiser, would like to buy Belgium’s entire navy, which is evidently for sale.

Sir James Parr, High Commissioner for New Zealand, complains that most of the films shown in the country’s 350 cinemas (a lot more than it has in 2026) are American and almost none British: “Are New Zealanders to be completely Americanised?” Also, American films suck, he says.

Headline 

Said uniform consists of “a black cocked hat adorned with white ostrich plumes, a black swallowtail coat, with gold buttons and lace, and black trousers.”

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon says of Mussolini: “Many of his measures are unique, indeed. But they are effective, and he certainly is making a new nation out of Italy.”

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

Today -100: October 12, 1926: Of mistrials, mob violence, dodging milk, and criminal petit bourgeois opposition

The federal trial of former attorney general Harry Daugherty ends in a mistrial when the jury fails to come to a verdict.

In retaliation for last month’s attempt by Chicago’s North Side Gang to rub out Al Capone, Capone gunmen kill the Gang’s head Hymie Weiss, 28 (aka Earl Weiss, born Henryk Wojciechowski), and gangster Paddy Murray in a machine gun attack outside the North Side Gang hq, Schofield’s Flowers, also wounding 3 others. One of the gunsels – not that the cops have any idea who they are – is called Sam “Golf Bag” Hunt.

NY Gov. Al Smith accuses challenger Ogden Mills of “talking about milk for political purposes.” He calls the Republican platform “the coldest and clammiest document” he’s ever seen.

Mills says Smith really just wants to be president and is only running for re-election because Tammany Hall ordered him to.

The Prussian Diet discusses – with the occasional thrown water tumbler – the settlement with former kaiser Wilhelm. Some are worried about a provision setting aside Bad-Homburg Palace for his use if he ever comes back to Germany. They are reassured that he won’t do that because then he’d have to pay taxes on his income and property like a common commoner.

The Soviet Politburo takes measures to prevent the opposition (Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc) being heard, including sending claques to meetings to disrupt speakers and censoring reports of meetings at which they were able to speak anyway. Pravda accuses “the criminal petit bourgeois opposition” of “aiming at undermining the party discipline and... trying to open up fresh discussion and foist upon the party decisions long ago rejected.”

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

Today -100: October 11, 1926: Of baseball, illegal uniforms, and gas

The St. Louis Cards win the World Series over the Yankees. I’m reliably informed that this story is about baseball.

During the game, baseball fans in Emporia, Kansas gather outside the Emporia Gazette offices to watch the scores change on a magnetic score board, which sounds super-exciting. Clergy complain about this Sunday activity, although the Gazette, which started doing this with last Sunday’s game, pointed out that the game began 30 minutes after services.

The German League for the Rights of Man charges former prince Wilhelm (grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm) with wearing the uniform of an army lieutenant during maneuvers (he was made a lt. before the war, when he was 10, probably on merit, right?). Gen. von Seeckt was fired as Army Chief for allowing Willy to do this.

The American Legion opposes the ratification of the Geneva protocol banning the use of poison gas in war. It says gas is humane and effective. The opposition to poison gas, according to John Thomas Taylor, chair of the Legion’s Legislative Committee, comes from pacifists, not practical soldiers.

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

Today -100: October 10, 1926: Of prospective wars, lynchings, and weddings

The Daily Express (UK) claims that Mussolini is planning to go to war with Turkey to gain “influence” on the Aegean coast.

A mob in Doyer, Tennessee seizes and lynches a black man, Rip Bell, who supposedly killed a farmer during a fight over a craps game (or “‘crap’ game,” as the NYT puts it, which is not what it was called then or ever).

The world’s first Esperanto-language wedding takes place in London. He’s British and she’s Austrian. There’s a Reuters newsreel of it on YouTube, obviously silent so what’s the point of that?

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

Today -100: October 9, 1926: Of lynchings

In Aiken, South Carolina, a lynch mob of 100 to 150 assholes break into the county jail and abduct (almost certainly with the connivance of the sheriff, as opposed to the bullshit version given in this article) 3 negroes, one of them a woman, charged with murdering the kluxer sheriff last year in a shoot-out when he raided their farm looking for illegal liquor. They’d been convicted but the state Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial; yesterday the judge directed a not guilty verdict for... wait for it... Demon Lowman. The verdicts for the other two, Lowman’s sister & cousin, had not yet been delivered when the mob jumped the gun, as it were. Judge Lanham convenes the Grand Jury to do “the most searching inquiry possible” and says the lynchings were a disgrace to civilization and the white race. You can guess how effective the most searching inquiry possible will be.

The NYT says the lynchings were “a wanton act of savagery,” which is the worst kind of acts of savagery. It notes that the prisoners were let loose and then gunned down “in Mexican style” as they ran.

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

Today -100: October 8, 1926: Religious war? OK!

George Key, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic State Committee, says Republican activities are “peculiarly calculated to produce a religious war in Oklahoma.” I think that’s about Johnston backing Al Smith for president in ‘28. The D’s candidate for governor, Henry Johnston, is an open member of the Ku Klux Klan; Republican candidate Omer Benedict admits to having been a kluxer in the past. 

The Texas House of Representatives demands that Gov. Miriam Ferguson fulfil her promise to resign if she lost the D. primary, as she did. The State Senate then kills the measure as not coming under the terms of Ferguson’s call for the special session.

At former attorney general Harry Daugherty’s trial, his lawyer explains that when he burnt all his bank records, it was “in some mad, lone moment”. The lawyer blames the whole bribe-taking thing on Dirty Harry’s friend Jess Smith, who conveniently committed suicide 3 years ago.

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

Today -100: October 7, 1926: Without they first have the endorsement

Lamartine Griffin Hardman, 71, described as a “banker, cotton mill owner and practising physician,” wins the Democratic run-off primary for Georgia governor, one of many Georgia elections this year where Klan-backed candidates lose  big time.

The Indiana Republican newspaper editors’ organization releases a photostat of a contract signed in February 1925 by John L. Duvall, promising that if he is elected mayor of Indianapolis with Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson’s support (which he was), “I promise not to appoint any person as member of the Board of Public Works without they first have the endorsement of D.C. Stephenson” and to appoint Claude Worley chief of police. Duvall says it’s a forgery. It will be the basis of his corruption conviction a year from now.

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

Today -100: October 6, 1926: Of endorsements and royal property

In the New York elections, William Randolph Hearst comes out for Ogden Mills (R) for governor and Robert F. Wagner (D) for senator. Neither of them seem to be especially thrilled by the endorsement.

Prussia settles former kaiser Wilhelm’s claims to get his shit back. The Hohenzollerns will get 20 million marks – which is the equivalent of some money – in cash, 280,000 acres of land, a few castles, etc. Willy rejected a better deal a while back but complete expropriation has been getting more and more popular, so... He still lives in the Netherlands, banned from returning, but the princes have drifted back to Germany. Communists want them expelled.

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

Today -100: October 5, 1926: Of milk rings and baneful violators

Republican candidate for NY governor Rep. Ogden Mills attacks Gov. Al Smith for failing to bring down the bootleg milk ring, with its associated milk graft, and warns that a Smith victory would complete Tammany Hall’s control of state government. 

Democratic nominee for the New York US Senate seat Robert Wagner challenges James Wadsworth Jr. to say whether he advises, as Wagner does, a yes vote on the Prohibition reform referendum. Wadsworth would of course prefer to straddle the fence on this one.

Trotsky, Zinoviev, etc complained about Stalin’s crackdown within the Communist Party, including banning opposition members elected to the party conference, which has now been postponed 10 days. The Moscow party committee demands that the Central Committee repress “these bankrupt leaders, these baneful violators of party discipline” (baneful violators of party discipline are the worst kind of violators of party discipline, because of the bane).

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

Today -100: October 4, 1926: As such

Headline of the Day -100:

British Foreign Sec. Austen Chamberlain visited Italy last week, and Italy got super-excited at what they assumed was a sign that it was finally taking its place among the big dogs and that an alliance would be formed with Britain to offset Franco-German cooperation. Chamberlain says there are no such plans. He says Fascism would not suit Britain, but that he admires Mussolini personally. “He is a man of great force of character, great shrewdness, and great charm and simplicity in his personal conduct, and however you may judge his policy he is a great patriot.”

Baron Maurice de Rothschild of the Rich-Fuck Rothschilds, is elected to the French Chamber of Deputies for the Hautes-Alpes Department by a large majority. He was elected before but that election was not validated due to some Rothschild-level bribery. While the Chamber was debating this, he sent every deputy a brace of partridges; they kept the partridges and voted against him. 

Oh noes! “European royalty is facing a crisis”! It seems that more princesses are coming of age than princes to marry them. Some have been resorting to marrying mere nobles instead.

In Constantinople, Turkey shows how post-Islamic it is now by erecting its first statue depicting a human. Kemal Atatürk, naturally.

An image search suggests that most subsequent statues of Atatürk portray him on a horse.

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

Today -100: October 3, 1926: Of dragons, pleasant little trifles, and chapels

A group of Indiana Republican editors turns over evidence to the Indiana State Senate on the massive corruption and general shittery in the state government when it was under the control of Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. One person who really wants this information to come out: D.C. Stephenson, now in prison for second-degree murder and pissed that his friends in government didn’t get him out of trouble (and who have made sure he’s had no contact with the outside world whilst in prison).

Noël Coward’s play “This Was a Man” is banned by the Lord Chamberlain because it depicts adultery, so much adultery. Coward says that in future he’ll concentrate his serious plays on Broadway; “I shall from time to time write a pleasant little trifle for London.” “This Was a Man” won’t have a commercial run in Britain until 2014.

Italy’s Cabinet Council approves restoring capital punishment, which was abolished in 1888, for assassination attempts against Mussolini and the royal family.

Yale makes student chapel-attendance optional.

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

Today -100: October 2, 1926: Of political hypocrisy & relief

Democratic nominee for US Senate from NY Robert F. Wagner accuses Sen. James Wadsworth Jr. of “political hypocrisy” in changing from a dry to a wet position. Isn’t it surprising how Prohibition has turned into such a major issue in this election cycle, so many years into the great beverage experiment? There are just no other major issues this year.

Florida Gov. John Martin (D) is accused by the American Red Cross, among others, of sabotaging attempts to raise money for hurricane relief by downplaying the damage so as not to scare away tourists or burst the real estate bubble.

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

Today -100: October 1, 1926: Of early beatings, expenses, steel trusts, and flying cork

The theme of New York Republicans in the gubernatorial race will be “Beat Smith this year and you will not have to beat him in 1928,” that is, for president. To be fair, Al Smith is certainly using the governor’s office as a stepping-stone to the White House.

Rep. Ernest Willard Gibson (R-Vermont) spent 36¢ on his unopposed re-election primary, but on what? This is infuriatingly undisclosed.

France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg form an iron and steel trust to limit production, fix prices, and exclude US and British steel.

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 30, 1926: Of prohibition, forgotten crimes, and climbing popes

The New Hampshire Democratic Convention, unlike the NY and Massachusetts ones, supports Prohibition, blaming the Republicans for laxness for enforcement.

The NYT complains about the slowness of justice in the Teapot Dome case: “If the guilty men are ever convicted and punished, it will be only after the great majority of the people have forgotten with what crime they were charged.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 29, 1926: I am going to put on my fighting clothes

The New York Democratic Convention picks NY Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Wagner as its candidate for US Senate. He says “I have been a judge and I am going to put on my fighting clothes.”

The New York Republican Convention picks Congresscritter Ogden Mills for governor and James W. Wadsworth Jr. for re-election to the US Senate, the latter over strong objections from the Drys. Pro-Wadsworth speeches say he should be nominated because Coolidge wants him in the Senate.

The Massachusetts Democratic Convention votes unanimously for repeal of the prohibition laws. However, like their senatorial candidate David Walsh, they are “not in favor of the return of the saloon, with its saturnalia of evils.” A saturnalia of evils is the worst kind of saturnalia.

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

Today -100: September 28, 1926: The gunman in place of the barman

At the preliminary hearing of Aimee Semple McPherson et al, a witness who saw Sister Aimee in Carmel during the time she claims she was being held hostage in Mexico, is interrogated thus: “What is your religion, if any?” “Do you believe all the trash you read in the newspapers?” “I see I am talking to one of those boys who spots the women on the street when he drives by.”

Wayne Wheeler, the alliterative general-counsel for the Anti-Saloon League, complains about the New York Republican Party’s plan to abide by the results of the referendum on prohibition. See, the drys intend to boycott the vote, so I guess it shouldn’t count.

Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses the New York Democratic Convention as its temporary chair, speaking more about national Republicans than New York ones. He says that by claiming credit for economic prosperity, the Coolidge Admin is guilty of the common-law offence of seeking to obtain by false pretenses something actually belonging to others (economic laws + the efficiency and good sense of businessmen and workers). He attacks Republican tariffs. He says the way prohibition has been enforced has “given us the bootlegger in place of the saloonkeeper and the gunman in place of the barman.”

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

Today -100: September 27, 1926: Of guilt, throngs, crown princes, bunny hats, and umpires

French PM Raymond Poincaré calls on German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann to acknowledge, indeed to embrace, German’s guilt for starting the Great War.

Allen Dulles, the future CIA director, resigns from the Foreign Service because any further promotions (he was just named counselor to the legation at Peking) would entail expenses beyond his salary ($8,000 a year for the Peking gig) and he just can’t afford to supplement his little diplomacy hobby out of his own pocket.

Headline of the Day -100:

THRONG. With an R.

German newspapers claim that former crown prince Wilhelm, grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm, has enlisted in the German army as a private. He did not. They wouldn’t let him, of course, but he is also barred because he was made a lieutenant of the First Prussian Footguards during the war at the age of 10.

Headline of the Day -100:

The overseas soldier hat is made of Australian rabbit fur. The army is looking for a substitute.

Especially in New York, you often hear “Kill the ump,” but instances of umpicide are surprisingly rare. Anyway, at a game on Long Island between the Centuries and the Cubs, the brother of the Centuries’ catcher objects to a call of “out” and slugs the umpire, fatally.

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

Today -100: September 26, 1926: Of shorter weeks and radio wars

Henry Ford establishes a 5-day work week as permanent policy, after it was trialed in some plants in July. But only those workers who “deserve” it will get the same pay as they did for 6 days.

Russia is engaging in a “radio war,” supposedly the first, with Romania, broadcasting propaganda into that country. Romanian military stations are trying to block it by broadcasting buzzing. You need a license to own a radio set in Romania, and none are allowed near the border. The first Romanian radio station opened this month, playing phonograph records.

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

Today -100: September 25, 1926: ...and prosperity

The Republicans have a slogan for 1926: “Coolidge and prosperity.”

Ross Gilmore Marvin, part of  Robert Peary’s Arctic expeditions, was reported drowned in 1909. Now, Kudlooktoo, an Inuit attached to that expedition, who recently converted to Christianity, admits having shot him when Marvin tried to fire another Inuit and send him off without any supplies.

Black people, who know slavery when they see it, resist being conscripted to clean up after the hurricane in Florida, getting in a gunfight with marines in Miami.

And 3 black men are rumored, probably maybe falsely, to have been lynched for looting dead bodies near Miami, shot and then burned.

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

Today -100: September 24, 1926: Of boxers, hurricanes, and petitions

Gene Tunney beats Jack Dempsey to become heavyweight champeen, but Dempsey makes a lot more money out of the fight.

Florida police and militia and specially deputized American Legionnaires round up anyone who can’t prove they have a job and force them to help in hurricane cleanup. No mention of paying them anything.

Anti-typhoid serum and “medicinal” whiskey are being widely distributed.

It will be impossible to determine how many people died in the hurricane because many were buried without any record being kept, especially in Miami and Miami Beach. People who ask the cops for information are directed to the newspaper offices.

Charles Ponzi, in jail in Texas awaiting extradition to Massachusetts, offers Houston Mayor Oscar Holcombe the deeds to his Florida properties to sell for hurricane relief. Holcombe says no, calling it “an attempt to gain publicity at the expense” of hurricane victims.

The Mexican Congress rejects the Episcopate’s petition to drop the anti-Church bits of the Constitution and related legislation. Also, the Petitions Committee noticed that many of the signatures came from non-Mexican-citizens. Since Coolidge declared all this none of our business, the Church’s hope that outside nations would overawe the Mexican government is fading.

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

Today -100: September 23, 1926: Of poor devils, occupations, and radio fads

Gen. Lincoln Andrews, the head of federal prohibition enforcement, says prohibition agents will be fired if they drink and future hires will be required to take a pledge of total abstinence. One exception: agents who have to testify in court that they tasted the evidence and, yup, it’s whisky alright. Andrews calls those agents “poor devils” because “the product now available is of the most atrocious quality.”

Relief workers helping survivors of the Miami hurricane ask for medicinal whisky and are informed fuck you.

France (finally) begins to withdraw its troops from the Rhineland. 7,000 of them anyway.

Thomas Edison says radios should not be used for music because of distortion. Once the “radio fad” passes, he says, people will return to the phonograph. Radio dealers are finding them unprofitable.

Speaking of the radio fad, the BBC says it will only employ men as radio announcers, because of the heavy physical strain involved.

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

Today -100: September 22, 1926: Of mikados

A London revival of “The Mikado” elicits complaints by using actual Japanese garb or modern Japanese garb, whatever “Oriental Oxford bags” might be. Loose pants, I guess.

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

Today -100: September 21, 1926: Of reservations, degeneracy, and machine guns

The US has been negotiating to join the World Court, provided it be given equal status despite requiring certain “reservations,” such as not allowing League of Nations advisory opinions in any case involving the US.

Former prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia, the second son of former kaiser Wilhelm, is divorcing ex-princess Sophie Charlotte for the crime of... auditioning to be in movies, which is just plain embarrassing to the good name of Hohenzollern. She will bring counter-charges of degeneracy. Next month the court will declare him the guilty party, or the more guilty party.

Gunmen with machine guns do a drive-by at Al Capone’s Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, Illinois. This article is wrong that Capone was next door during the attack. He was in fact hiding under a table. Over 1,000 rounds are fired from seven cars into the Hawthorne & the neighboring Anton Hotel, which is also Capone-owned (Capowned?), but no one is killed. A family in a car experiences some injuries; Capone comes out and promises to pay their medical and presumably car-repair expenses, which will amount to $10,000.

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

Today -100: September 20, 1926: Zeal!

The corpses of the bandits who kidnapped & killed Jacob Rosenthal are still hanging from trees or, as the NYT puts it,  

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

Today -100: September 19, 1926: Miami is in ruins

A hurricane hits Miami and Palm Beach, killing several hundred people and doing $100 million of damage to Miami. Tropical Radio station reports “Miami is in ruins”.

Cuba is negotiating with Italy to take some of the latter’s excess population.

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

Today -100: September 18, 1926: Of bandits & citizenship

A day or two after bandits kill Jacob Rosenthal, Mexico executes 7 of them, all Indios, with more to come. Their bodies will be left hanging from trees, as was the custom. 3 more are killed when their compadres attempt to rescue them.

France has been arresting naturalized US citizens who were born French for evading military service to their former country. Also, American citizens born in France to American parents.

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

Today -100: September 17, 1926: We oppose the return of the saloon

The Connecticut Democratic State Convention calls for repeal of the 18th Amendment, calling it “an indefensible curtailment of personal liberty.” But it says as long as the indefensible curtailment of personal liberty remains the law of the land it should be enforced, and “We oppose the return of the saloon.” 

The L.A. County orders the arrest of Aimee Semple McPherson, her mother, and three others involved in her disappearance last May. The charge: conspiracy to defeat justice, including paying a woman to pretend it was she rather than Sister Aimee who inhabited the love shack in Carmel.

Mexican bandits who kidnapped Jacob Rosenthal of Long Island kill him when the Mexican authorities refuse to allow his family to pay the 20,000 peso (c.$10,000) ransom and send soldiers in not-very-good disguise to the drop-off point.

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

Today -100: September 16, 1926: I’ve just been strutting myself

Coolidge bans arms exports to Nicaragua. This is aimed at the rebels rather than the government. 

Sen. Rice Means loses the Colorado Republican primary for re-election, another sign of the declining influence of the Ku Klux Klan. 

The 3rd Ku Klux Klan convocation authorizes Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans to stay in hotel bridal suites during his travels. And they’re giving him a yacht. He will adopt a standard of living commensurate with the “dignity of the Klan.” “Boys,” the Imperial Dentist announces, “I’ve just been strutting myself. I’m going to leave it to you whether I shall continue to do so.”

In Canadian federal elections, the Liberal Party comes slightly short of a majority. Mackenzie King will probably be able to stitch something together allowing him to continue as prime minister.

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

Today -100: September 15, 1926: Everyone is at work and Mussolini works harder than anybody else

The Locarno treaties come into effect, triggered by Germany’s entry into the League of Nations. 

After all those constant denials that nobody really believed, Al Smith will run for re-election as governor of New York after hall because his health has improved – he’s had a mole removed from his back.

4,353,605 Spaniards vote in favor of the plebiscite for continued dictatorship (and 0 against, that not being an option on the ballot). That’s 13% of the electorate, which the regime considers a rousing success.

US ambassador to Italy Henry Fletcher congratulates Mussolini on surviving the latest assassination attempt, and effusively praises The Duck and the progress Italy has made under Fascism: “Everyone is at work and Mussolini works harder than anybody else.” Mussolini is giving the Italian people a new spirit and a new patriotism.

KKK Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans says that if any European nation invades Mexico (no, no one is really suggesting that will happen), “there are enough Klansmen in America to repel them.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Same.

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

Today -100: September 14, 1926: Of parades, strikes, more strikes, and milk wars

The Ku Klux Klan parade in D.C. is much smaller than last year’s, 15,000 to 20,000 this time around.

The British coal strike is still going on. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill can’t get mine owners to negotiate.

Oh that’s cute: the Spanish plebiscite is taking place on the third anniversary of Primo de Rivera’s coup.

Supposedly thinking they were enforcing a temporary injunction against the NYC garment workers’ strike, police arrest 480 strikers. But the injunction only applied to 3 union officials, not the strikers as a whole.

In other New York labor news, there is a “Bronx milk war.”

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

Today -100: September 13, 1926: Much more to be desired is that the experiment be worked out in peace and cool judgment

Mussolini says if the bomb had actually gone into his car instead of bouncing off it, he would simply have picked it up and thrown it back at the assassin. Sounds exactly like something Trump would say.

A NYT editorial on the assassination attempt says “While the special perils of a Dictator cannot be ignored, no thoughtful person desires to see that form of tyranny tempered by assassination. Much more to be desired is that the experiment be worked out in peace and cool judgment.” Jesus fucking Christ.

Name of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 12, 1926: I truly love to live in danger

An anarchist, Gino Lucetti, throws a bomb at Benito Mussolini’s car. It bounces off, injuring some bystanders when it explodes. Lucetti tries to escape, throws another bomb, which fails to go off, at the cops trying to arrest him. They have to protect him from an angry mob. Lucetti has been living in Marseilles, where he fled last year after getting in a shoot-out with a Fascist. He snuck back into Italy on a rowboat. He will be sentenced to 30 years, will escape or be released in 1943, and soon die in a German bombing raid.

Speaking from his office window (the Chigi Palace having an egregious lack of balconies), Mussolini tells a crowd, “Excessive and culpable tolerance of plotters beyond our frontiers cannot any longer be endured.” He’s talking about France, which hosts not only refugees from Fascist Italy but anti-Fascist newspapers. He says, “As I have abolished strikes, I intend absolutely to stop periodical attempts against my life. I say this not on account of myself, because I truly love to live in danger, but on account of the Italian people, who work and produce and have a right not to be disturbed by such recurrent happenings.” He suggests he will bring back hanging. (Update: another article has The Duck saying, “From this balcony...” but I’ve looked at a bunch of pictures of the Palace and I maintain there aren’t any, if you’re wondering what I’ve been doing with my time today).

A bomb blows up a car in the “Little Italy” neighborhood of Harlem, killing at least one person in the car and severely wounding two more. This may be related to a Fascist street meeting held on the same corner a bit earlier, although the fire department claims the car’s gas tank probably exploded. No one believes them. The bomb may have belonged to the car’s occupants. (Update from tomorrow -100’s paper: one more dies and the two dead are both in Fascist organizations, so yeah they definitely planned to throw the bomb, which the police and fire dept still refuse to acknowledge was the cause of the explosion, at the ANTI-Fascist meeting in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Mussolini).

Spain quits the League of Nations (well, gives the required two-year notice).

Spaniards are voting on the thing that isn’t a proper plebiscite because there’s no option to vote against dictatorship (also, the government will know that the people who do not vote oppose it). King Alfonso is believed to oppose Primo de Rivera’s regime, going so far (hah!) as to appoint Gen. Dámaso Berenguer (the future “soft dictator”) to the royal household; Primo de Rivera said that rather than shake Berenguer’s hand he’d prefer to run him through with a sword, which is also my usual Yelp review.

Staten Island concludes the celebration of its sesquicentennial, which is pretty fancy language for an outer borough.

Frisian regions of the Netherlands are insisting on the use of the Frisian language in schools.

In other news, there is a “Frisian” language.

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

Today -100: September 11, 1926: Of pirate radio, militaries, women’s suffrage, and nudists. German nudists, like you hadn’t already guessed that.

Mexican Pres. Plutarco Elías Calles is attacked on a pirate radio station, whose transmitter the police have been unable to locate. Is this the first time such a thing has happened?

The French government reduces military spending, retiring 3,900 officers (leaving 128,000), raising the age of conscription from 20 to 21, and firing 7,000 military horses and... we’re all thinking it.

Spain’s plebiscite will entail the first use by women of their new right to vote. So women can now vote for dictatorship. Yay?

Prussia’s interior minister approves “cultural nudists” frolicking in public in woods and by lakes, provided view of them is screened off by shrubs or whatever.

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

Today -100: September 10, 1926: Of ministers plenipotentiary, demons, and fish

The USSR names a woman, Alexandra Kollontai, as minister plenipotentiary to Mexico.

Headline of the Day -100:

Not actual demons, sadly, but a Lt. Demons, chief officer of the French ship Lotus, which collided with and sank a Turkish coal ship, killing 8 Turkish sailors. It then docked in Constantinople, where he was arrested.  (Update: his real name is Desmons)

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 9, 1926: Willkommen

Former Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty and former Alien Property Custodian Thomas Miller are on trial for taking bribes for selling off German securities seized during the war to a Swiss company in 1921.

The League of Nations Assembly votes unanimously to admit Germany. German monarchists mock the whole thing, devalued as it is by Poland being simultaneously elected to the League Council.

Spain’s King Alfonso withdraws his martial law decree 3 days after issuing it. His appeal to artillerist rebels was obeyed when dictator Primo de Rivera’s was ignored.

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

Today -100: September 8, 1926: Of berets, true lovers of liberty, valets, and smoking

Front-Page Headline of the Day -100:

Spain, pissed at the League of Nations decision tomorrow to let Germany join with a permanent seat on the Council while Spain only gets a non-permanent one, decides to quit the League. Why, we’re the mother country of 20 Spanish-speaking nations! they say.

The bishops of Mexico issue a pastoral letter calling on Mexican Catholics to “Imitate the true lovers of liberty who have known how to stand in the breach until they died or won.” Like early Christians, they’re holding religious services in catacombs or something, blah blah blah, sorry, got bored.

Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody wants all Ku Klux Klan members in government to resign when he becomes governor.

Major Arthur Brooks, valet to the last four presidents, dies at 66. A black man, of course. Going in and out of consciousness, he summoned someone from the White House to give them the combination of the White House silver vaults.

Former Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany is taking flying lessons. He does some loops and shit over Berlin’s Tempelhofer airfield, evidently smoking the whole time (the princeling, not the plane), for which he gets told off by a cop.

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

Today -100: September 7, 1926: Of nervous conditions, kidnap plots, notaries, sleep, and polar bears

The train with Rudolph Valentino’s body arrives in L.A. The late Mr. Valentino is taken off the train in a suburban station to prevent more mob scenes. Also Rudolph’s brother and Pola Negri, who “appeared to be in an extremely nervous condition.”

Spain claims to have foiled a republican plot to kidnap King Alfonso to force him to abdicate.

Headline of the Day -100:

This is literally true. The city borrowed from US banks to develop electrical works. The banks then insisted Burgomaster Karl Rothe sign each one of 7,000 notes before a notary either in New York City or in Leipzig. Sending Rothe to NY turns out to be cheaper than sending a notary to Leipzig, presumably because they’re sending him steerage class.

Irenee du Pont, vice chairman of the Board of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Co. thinks it is possible to create a chemical substitute for sleep.

Headline of the Day -100:

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

Today -100: September 6, 1926: Drill, baby, drill

The Federal Oil Conservation Board finds that existing US oil reserves in the ground amount to only 6 years’ supply, so we’d better get cracking (not fracking) on finding more.

Spain declares martial law to enable the punishment of the “absolute indiscipline” in the Artillery Corps.

In his forthcoming message to Congress, Coolidge “will not recommend new legislation that might disturb business.”  Current anti-trust laws, he thinks, are perfectly adequate.

100 federal Prohibition agents surge into Charleston, South Carolina, arresting prohibition agents, sheriffs & constables, bribe-taking being the primary charge.

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