Today -100: March 22, 1926: Of dictators and humanized public institutions

Headline of the Day -100:

No kidding.

Actually, the article, which does not mention Herr Hitler at all, is about media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, the Rupert Murdoch of his day, whose far-right German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, or DNVP) is still a couple of inches shy of fascism. HuggyBear’s preferred dictator, if any, is not revealed.

Labor Secretary James J. Davis is evidently so vital to the functioning of the federal government that Coolidge told him not to run for governor of Pennsylvania, so he says he won’t, although he does inform us of what his platform would be if he did run, which he says he won’t. He would “humanize our public institutions,” which is a good way of describing reforms or probation and juvenile courts and abolishing poor houses. He really won’t run for governor, although it sure sounds like he’s champing at the bit. He will be elected to the US Senate in 1930.

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Today -100: March 21, 1926: Of vets-screwer-overs, illinium, and nipples

Charles Forbes, the former head of the Veterans’ Bureau, which he and his cronies robbed blind, begins a two-year sentence at Leavenworth, of which he’ll serve 20 months.

Element #61 has been discovered by scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and named illinium. In other news: no, they haven’t, they just think they have. Which is probably why my computer doesn’t recognize the word “illinium.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: March 20, 1926: Is it a dog or a fish?

John Calvin Coolidge Sr. deeded his farm to Pres. Coolidge 3 weeks ago and other property before that. Inheritance tax avoidance? The deed was actually owned until 3 weeks ago by the estate of his father, Calvin Galusha Coolidge, who died in 1878. The successful businessman/farmer/etc died supposedly penniless and without a will.

NYT Op-ed on JCC Sr.: “The most that could be got out of his close-lipped Yankee taciturnity was the expression of his belief that his son would do ‘fairly well’ as President.”

King George visits a London exhibition of Canadian artists and is baffled, by a Futurist painting, as was the custom, asking “Is it a dog or a fish?” (the artist is sadly unidentified, nor is the species depicted in the artwork revealed, which is just poor journalism). 

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Today -100: March 19, 1926: Of Seniors and challengers

Pres. Coolidge’s father, Col. John Calvin Coolidge Sr., dies at age 80. A retired JP and former Vermont legislator and senator, Senior also occupied posts ranging from constable to road commissioners to town selectman. The president was informed onboard the train he was taking to Senior’s bedside.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist is published, in which he shits on his Professor Challenger character, who discovers the spirit world, or something. At least Doyle didn’t do this to Sherlock Holmes.

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Today -100: March 18, 1926: Of leagues, gross immorality, and pygmies

The League of Nations Assembly fails to admit Germany to the League because of the whole fight about who gets to join the Council and in what order. Everybody’s blaming Brazil. The League will take this up again in the next session in five months.

Famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who will coin the word “clone,” at least in its modern sense, wins his appeal against his expulsion from the Cambridge University staff by the Sex Viri committee (If you are at work, do not google “sex viri”) for “gross immorality” because he was named as a respondent in the divorce case of Charlotte Franken, which some people seem to think is none of Cambridge’s business. He will marry Franken later in the year.

An expedition to Dutch New Guinea led by Berkeley Prof. Matthew Stirling begins next month. It’s looking for pygmies, as one does.

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Today -100: March 17, 1926: His death was a tremendous blow to me

The New York Assembly Judiciary Committee, dominated by Republicans,  kills Gov. Al Smith’s measures for a 4-year gubernatorial term, for reapportionment for both houses of the Legislature on the basis of – can you imagine it? – population. It does approve a referendum for a pay raise for the governor, whose current $10,000 a year is less than that of some of his appointees. The State Senate Judiciary Committee kills a proposal for a referendum to ask the US Congress to modify the Volstead act to permit the sale of light wines and beer. The Assembly’s Labor and Industries Committee kills Smith’s proposal for a 48-hour work week for women & children.

The first witness at the much-delayed Matteotti murder trial, Amerigo Dumini, leader of the Fascist death squad, admits to organizing the Socialist leader’s kidnapping, but claims Matteotti died of natural causes, as one does during a kidnapping: “Matteotti was not murdered, he died. His death was a tremendous blow to me.” Dumini says he couldn’t have been part of the actual killing because he was driving the car. Then why did you have bruises when you were arrested 2 days later? he is asked. He denies he had bruises only to be shown the report of the police doctor. Old war wounds and insect bites, he says. And what about all the blood on the car if Matty died of TB? It ain’t going well for Dumini. He is unable to substantiate his claim that Matteotti was involved in the 1924 murder of Fascist Nicola Bonservizi in France (which he wasn’t).

The Indianapolis City Council adopts an ordinance pushed by the White People’s Protective League for residential segregation by race.

The House of Representatives votes 48 to 2 to reject an amendment to the DC Appropriations Bill withholding the salary of any teacher who teaches evolution or “disrespect to the Bible, partisan politics or that ours is an inferior form of government.”

Headline of the Day -100:

“I can totally pull out in time,” Herbert Hoover says.

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Today -100: March 16, 1926: Kitty!

The Great Smoky Mountain Conservation Society sends Pres. Coolidge a wildcat as a, you know, pet. Instead, he’ll be sending it to the zoo.

The Italian government makes its first (?) use of the law allowing it to strip the citizenship of expats who criticize the Fascist regime, in this case the radical journalist Carlo Tresca, currently residing in New York.

Lady Vera Terrington, who was the 4th woman Member of Parliament (1923-4), is divorcing Harold, the 2nd Lord Terrington, for adultery. He says he will fight the suit.

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Today -100: March 15, 1926: If they don’t want them that’s their look-out

Capt. Frank Doudera, a famous hunter, is bringing two timber wolves he captured in Quebec to New York, intending to give one to Mayor Jimmy Walker and the other to Brooklyn Borough President Joseph Guider. This according to a telegram he sent the Canadian Pacific Railway, which informed the NYT. Do they WANT timber wolves, the intrepid reporter asks. “I don’t know,” but “if they don’t want them that’s their look-out.”

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Today -100: March 14, 1926: Of booze and bribes

An Anti-Saloon League delegation visits the White House, trying to get Coolidge to condemn the move in Congress to, um, water down the Volstead Act. Coolidge evidently tells them he doesn’t see any need to inject himself into the Prohibition discussion.

The US government, as I probably mentioned, is suing to cancel Harry Sinclair’s Teapot Dome oil lease. Wallace Abbott, secretary to former Interior Secretary Albert Fall, was supposed to testify about Sinclair’s bribing of Fall; instead, he commits suicide.

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Today -100: March 13, 1926: Of reasonable concessions, dining alone, fasts, and disarmaments

Germany rejects the compromise proposal that Poland join the League of Nations Council on a non-permanent basis at the same time as Germany joins both the League and the Council, with decisions on Spain and Brazil postponed. French PM Aristide Briand says they’ve reached “the extreme limit of concessions.” British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain says there’s no point in further discussions: “We have made every reasonable concession, and if the Locarno plan fails now the plain fault will be that of Germany” (yes, it’s his brother Neville who made every unreasonable concession to Germany in 1938).

It’s generally agreed that if an agreement is not reached, the future of the League of Nations would be in doubt, and the already shaky governments of France and Germany, and possibly Britain, would fall.

Since Crown Prince Carol renounced the Romanian throne in January, the king and queen are barely speaking and no longer eat together. There is a plan afoot to allow him to return from exile as a private citizen. (The article offhandedly, after the fold, mentions that 1) there is an anti-Semitic student strike in Bucharest, 2) the Horthy regime is using it as an excuse to station troops there just when it’s trying to get the parliament to pass a new voting system modeled on Mussolini’s. Maybe put that shit ahead of the royal gossip).

Following the success of hunger artist “Jolly,” so many people have applied to sit in a glass booth and not eat that the Berlin chief of police bans any new professional fasters (grandfathering in those like Jolly who are currently mid-fast).

The Danish Folketing (Parliament) votes to mostly abolish the army and navy.

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Today -100: March 12, 1926: Like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist

Virginia’s State Senate has its first ever impeachment, that of Sen. Alfred C. Smith, after it’s discovered that he was convicted of forgery in South Carolina in 1913 and of getting his Virginia law licence fraudulently in 1914. During the impeachment debate, Smith accuses Sen. James Barron of doing the work of the Knights of Columbus. The senate removes him from office. In November he’ll be re-elected, unopposed (!) to serve the remainder of his term. He’ll be convicted of fraud, again, in 1938 and go to prison.

Socialist congresscritter Victor Berger lobbies the government to restore Eugene Debs’s civil rights. Attorney Gen. John Sargent tells him Debs would have to apply for a pardon personally. Berger says this Debs refuses to do because he asserts that he did nothing wrong: “This is like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist.”

During a debate in the British Parliament on maintaining a Navy of 102,675 men, George Lansbury (grandfather of Angela) proposes reducing that by, oh, say, 100,000, saying the Navy is used for capitalist exploitation throughout the world. His motion loses 167 to 19.

Mississippi bans the teaching in state-supported schools that man “ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.”

Austrian Fascists are calling for restorations(s) of the Habsbugs (that was a typo, but I like it so I’m keeping it), but with Otto as king of Austria and other Habsbugs as kings of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia. I’m not sure how this would work with their other goal of Anschluß with Germany; presumably Germany would have to restore its own emperor or even all its royal families.

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Today -100: March 11, 1926: Of councils, beer, and engagements

Brazil threatens to veto Germany joining the League of Nations Council (which would stop it joining the League at all) if Brazil doesn’t also get a permanent seat on it (no South American country currently has a permanent seat). Other countries (Italy, Spain) might block German entry to the Council if other countries don’t come in at the same time, but Sweden is threatening to veto the entry to the Council of any other country than Germany. (Also, if Germany doesn’t join the League, the Locarno treaties don’t go into effect).

During a heated debate in the House on relaxing Prohibition, Emanuel Celler (D-NY) reads out George Washington’s recipe for beer.

Rudolph Valentino denies rumors spread by Pola Negri that they are engaged. She pulled this same stunt with Charlie Chaplin.

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