Today -100: May 19, 1923: Of throats, consulates, hard & fast yearning, drums, and dye heads

British Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law has been consulting high-end doctors in Paris, and a Harley Street doc rushed over to Paris to consult, but his friends (in the absence of any official statement) are still saying it’s just a sore throat. It isn’t.

If he resigns, there’s a succession problem: Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India and head of the anti-women’s suffrage movement, current foreign secretary, would be the logical choice (certainly in his own mind), but there hasn’t been a PM from the House of Lords in more than 20 years and it’s no longer considered... appropriate by most people. Such is the nature of an unwritten constitution. Norms change slowly over time. The necessity for a PM to defend his policies and respond to questions in the Commons rather than the Lords would be underscored if Bonar Law steps down because he can no longer do those things (or speak at all, evidently). When this problem next comes up with the Earl of Home, they’ll change the law to allow peers to renounce their titles, making way for him to sit in the Commons as lowly Alec Douglas-Home, the eminently forgettable PM from 1963 to 1964.

The US consulate in Mexico City is bombed. Was it conservatives trying to make trouble for the Obregón regime? Bolsheviks? A cap is found at the scene with a Red button, which is probably good enough for the latter to be blamed. But a letter attached to a door suggests the target was actually the office of a lawyer who rented space in the consulate building; the office took most of the damage.

Announcing this, the State Dept belatedly admits that the US Embassy in Mexico was bombed two weeks ago.

The Austrian ambassador to Germany says Austrians are “hard and fast in their yearning for union of Austria with Germany.” Which he thinks will happen sooner rather than later. German Pres. Ebert, in the audience, claps and claps.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: May 18, 1923: Of becoming erections, reparations, and inventions

Pres. Harding, speaking at the unveiling of a statue of his hero Alexander Hamilton (“It is a most becoming thing to erect”), attacks growing factionalism in the US, such as “the false cry of class” and the Ku Klux Klan. Okay, he bravely fails to specifically name the Klan, but that’s what his reference to groups “challenging civil and religious liberty” is taken to mean.

Greece and Turkey are still arguing over peace terms. Turkey wants reparations from Greece, so Greece is demanding reparations from Turkey.

The British Institute of Patentees issues a list of inventions that would be nice:

Glass that bends

A non-slip road surface

Non-shrinking fannel

Noiseless airplanes

Planes that can be operated by children

Less friction

Easily cleaned pipes (the smoking kind)

Non-alcoholic drinks that aren’t awful

Talking motion pictures

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Today -100: May 17, 1923: A nation can’t survive half sloshed, or something

Pres. Harding responds to a letter from a Dr. Wesley Wait, who Wikipedia identifies as “an American inventor, author, dental surgeon, and florist” – so why is Harding answering his letters? – who asked for some federal response if NY Gov. Al Smith signs the bill repealing the bill for the enforcement of Prohibition in the state. I think Wait wants the arrest of NY state legislators for treason. Harding invokes Lincoln’s assertion that the nation could not survive half slave and half free. Which is just a terrible comparison.

Harding uses a recess appointment to name Walter Cohen collector of customs at New Orleans. The Senate rejected Cohen during the last Congress, because he is black.

Leon Trotsky sends $125,000 of presumably government money to his brother in Berlin, who lost a bundle speculating on the German mark.

Last month Mussolini forced 4 Catholic (Popular) Party members out of his government because the party didn’t pledge to adopt Fascist policies totally and forever. Now the party reverses itself.

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Today -100: May 16, 1923: Of dyes, floggings, and the most powerful medium of influence over the people

France seizes 4 dye and chemical factories in the Ruhr.

Florida bans the flogging of convicts.

At a Federal Trade Commission hearing into the monopolization of the movie industry by Famous Players-Lasky, Thomas Edison says movies, and therefore who controls them, are super-important: “There is nothing so powerful as motion pictures in influencing people. ... Whoever controls the motion picture industry controls the most powerful medium of influence over the people.” And it’ll just get more powerful. In 20 years there won’t even be books in schools, just motion pictures.

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Today -100: May 15, 1923: Premier Mussolini has demonstrated evolutionary progress

Headline of the Day -100:  

Or so he says to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance holding its annual congress in Rome. Pres. Carrie Chapman Catt says “Premier Mussolini has demonstrated evolutionary progress. From doubt about women suffrage, he has arrived at the conviction that it cannot long be postponed.” However, the suffrage he is proposing is for “several classes of women” and is only in local elections, with national ones maybe later. Women will get the local vote in 1925 aaaaaand have it taken away again in 1928.

The Florida State Senate adopts a resolution that Darwinism, atheism & agnosticism should not be taught in public schools.

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Today -100: May 14, 1923: Making out like bandits

China gives the kidnapping bandits everything they want: withdrawal of government troops from the area, absorption of the bandits into the army. I assume there’s a cash component as well.

The German government forbids its citizens in the Rhineland and the Ruhr traveling on on trains run by the French or Belgians. Also, towns in the Ruhr are forbidden from paying fines levied by the occupiers and individuals are forbidden to apply to them for drivers licenses.

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Today -100: May 13, 1923: Of putsches, bridges, and kidnappers

In Hamburg, several generals and others are arrested for planning a putsch to overthrow the Hamburg government and hopefully inspire a national putsch.

A bridge over the Rhine-Heren Canal is blown up, nearly taking out a French troop train. The French respond by arresting the burgomaster of Osterfeld and fining the town 100 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money.

The ultimatum that the foreign ambassadors gave the Chinese government to obtain the release of the people kidnapped from the Shanghai-Peking Express expires, but 16 or 17 foreigners, including 5 Americans, are still in captivity. Plus some Chinese people, but of course they don’t count.

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Today -100: May 12, 1923: Nice work if you can get it

Bavaria is under martial law, because “Hittler [sic], who is rapidly losing his popularity,” may be planning a putsch.

Famous motion picture canine Prince Ski is dead. He was paid $30 a day “and his specialty was strolling through gardens with richly gowned women.”

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Today -100: May 11, 1923: One must have the courage to deliver Europe from the Bolshevist plague

Vatslav Vorovsky, the Soviet delegate to the Lausanne Conference, is assassinated in the restaurant of the Hotel Cécil, and two other Russians attached to the mission and dining with him are wounded in the attack. The assassin then hands his gun to the head waiter and tells him to call the police. He is Maurice Conradi, a Swiss citizen who served in the Russian military before and during the war and the White Army during the civil war. His father and uncle, he says, died of starvation and Russian cruelty (or it may have been that his father and brother were executed). “This evening I have done an act of justice which I do not regret, for one must have the courage to deliver Europe from the Bolshevist plague.” The Swiss Fascists, who had ordered Vorovsky to leave Switzerland, deny any connection to the murder. Russia blames Switzerland which, not having invited any Russian delegates to the conference, declined to give them any protection.

Conradi and his confederate Arkady Polunin will be tried in November. They’ll use the trial to attack the Soviet government and will be acquitted, though Conradi will be ordered to pay the costs of the trial. Russia will cut diplomatic relations. Conradi will continue to live in Switzerland for a bit, then move to France, join the French Foreign Legion, and die in 1947.

Pathé objects to the Motion Picture Commission censoring Good Riddance, a lost, I think, Hal Roach comedy short about a man trying to get rid of a dog his girlfriend objects to. The censor insisted on cutting a scene in which the dog is thrown out of an airplane and “all views of man’s leg exposed where trouser is pulled off by dog at dance” and a scene of a a fuse attached to a dog’s tail. She says these are inhuman and incite crime. Pathé Exchange suggests she didn’t realize it’s a comedy. It points out that the dog survives being thrown out of an airplane, landing unharmed in the back seat of a car. “We fail to see where the element of inhumanity enters.” It notes that films involve exaggerated actions: “For instance, one does not ordinarily hang a Chinaman out of the window by his hair, yet in this picture such a scene is shown.” And as for the naked leg, “It is not clear whether this scene is declared to be inhuman or would tend to incite to crime.” The case is now going to court. Gotta say, this film does not sound like a laff riot. Incidentally, the star is James Parrott, better known as a director of many Laurel & Hardy pictures. And he was Charley Chase’s brother, which I did not know.

(Update: an appellate court will reverse the Motion Picture Commission’s cuts to the film.)

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Today -100: May 10, 1923: It is none of our business whether Christ went to heaven or not

A French military court in the Ruhr sentences to death a German who led a gang which dynamited railroads, the first time the French have done so, despite the many, many threats. Supposedly the dynamiters were paid by Krupp (I think not). The gang members are also found guilty of (gasp, horror) spreading anti-French propaganda.

A US District Court voids the parts of the Volstead Act limiting how much liquor a doctor can prescribe to one pint per 10 days. That’s for doctors to decide, sez the judge.

Irish Free State Prez William Cosgrove rejects Éamon de Valera’s peace terms and declines further communication with him, including the personal conference the fugitive future president suggested.

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey rejects a suggestion that they take the next day, Ascension Day, off. Riza Nur Bey says that would be an infringement of Turkish sovereignty somehow. “It is none of our business whether Christ went to heaven or not, nor do we care on what day he went there.” Meanwhile, the Russian delegates, who showed up without being invited to the conference, are being guarded by the police because of threats by the Swiss Fascists. How well guarded, we shall see.

Responding to the US decision to bar all ships entering US territorial waters from carrying liquor, even if it’s locked up, the House of Commons votes 184 to 128 to require passenger ships entering British waters to carry liquor. The bill is a jape, and won’t go any further.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word jape before.

The New York City Memorial Day parade will feature Fascists marching in the Italian Fascist uniform. They were invited by the American Legion.

New dancing record: 160 hours & 55 minutes. I’m bored; can we do phone-booth stuffing now?

Headline of the Day That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t -100: 

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Today -100: May 9, 1923: That smile we know so well

Britain issues a snippy ultimatum to Russia. It will break off trade relations in 10 days unless Russia stops doing anti-British propaganda in India, Afghanistan and Persia; withdraws its refusal to receive official British complaints about the trials of religious figures; and accepts liability for offenses to individuals and ships (I guess they sunk a fishing boat?). And they complain that the British agent in Moscow has been subjected to “studied insolence,” which is the worst kind of insolence. The Tory government is obviously looking for an excuse to tear up the agreement Lloyd George made with Russia.

The French court-martial sentences Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach to 15 years. And a fine.  Other Krupp company directors (some of whom are out of reach in Germany proper) are sentenced to 10, 15, or 20 years. This is for the incident on March 31 when French soldiers tried to seize Krupp company automobiles and got into a fight with workers while, according to the military prosecutor, the directors looked on from inside “with that smile we know so well from the days when German officers smiled while French villages, farms and homesteads burned.” So their crime is... smirking in the first degree. The prosecutor says the blood of the German workers killed by the French soldiers is on the directors’ hands (no French soldiers were killed). Chancellor Cuno calls the sentence a contemptible travesty, which is the worst kind of travesty.

The NYPD arrest 807 men for witnessing an immoral performance. They’re driven to the police station where they give their names (Jones, Smith, Brown) and addresses (vacant lots, public buildings). I think this is the NYPD’s nose-thumbing response to a magistrate who released a bunch of people Monday, saying it’s not actually against the law to view a performance the police consider immoral.

Diplomats in China from the countries whose citizens were kidnapped from the Peking express demand that China pay the ransom demanded by the bandits (the US is specifically demanding that the Chinese government pay it). The diplomats threaten to impose an indemnity on China if anyone is still being held on the 12th, increasing every day after that.

New York Health Commissioner Frank Monaghan says women should wear a corset: “It lends support to vital organs which need bracing, thus permitting them to function properly without strain.” Also, it makes them super-hot, which is good for their mental health.

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Today -100: May 8, 1923: I can face prison myself

Harding says the “national heart, conscience and judgment” support joining the World Court. Really, every American wants to join, he’s pretty sure.

Lucy Aldrich is released, I guess, by the Chinese bandits who attacked the Peking Express and made off with many of its passengers. Or, not released, but left behind with other white women unable to keep up with the forced march. Some captives are still being held.

At the French court-martial of Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of the Krupp conglomerate (by marriage; the “Krupp” in his name is from his wife), Krupp is asked why he returned to the Ruhr knowing he faced arrest instead of remaining in Germany so the French could call him a fugitive, as they clearly intended, and why he didn’t ask two other indicted Krupp directors to return with him. “Even though innocent I can face prison myself... but I cannot ask it of others to face prison for me.”

No one likes the painting Sir William Orpen painted for the Imperial War Museum, To The Unknown British Soldier in France. Critics hate it and the museum won’t take it. It looked something like this:

Orpen denies that it was ironic or something: “I painted the picture in all seriousness and humility.” Later on he painted out the emaciated soldiers and chubby cherubs and the museum finally accepted it.

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Today -100: May 7, 1923: Of train kidnappings, home sweet home, and broken treaties

France and Belgium reject Germany’s reparations proposals. They decide not to issue a joint reply with Britain. Not surprisingly, they want more money than Germany offered. They say there will be no talks until passive resistance ends, denying Germany’s claim that passive resistance is a spontaneous act of the people of the Ruhr instead of ordered by the German government, and say they won’t end the occupation until Germany pays up.

Lucy Aldrich, daughter of a former and sister-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., is kidnapped by bandits in China, along with 150 other train passengers, during an attack on the Shanghai-Peking Express. Or 300 passengers according to a different AP dispatch printed right below the first one. The bandits derail the train, shoot it up, and steal everything they can before marching their captives
 off into the night in their nightclothes.

The song “Home Sweet Home” (you know, “Be it ever so humble etc”) is 100 years old, and at least 15,000 people gather in Prospect Park to commemorate the occasion with a sing-song, because that’s what life was like before the internet.

8 Sioux tribes will sue the US for $700,000,000 for treaty violations. Stolen land, some containing extensive gold deposits, slaughtered game, the usual.

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Today -100: May 6, 1923: Of princes and exclusions

A NYT Sunday Magazine article on the Prince of Wales worries that the 28-year-old prince seems to have more interest in his horses, which he keeps falling off, than in marrying. Be careful what you wish for.

This week, unreported in the NYT, Canada’s Parliament passed a Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese people from entering the country except for university students, Canadian-born Chinese returning from abroad – if they’ve been absent less than two years – diplomats, and merchants (not including restauranteurs or laundry owners). Ethnic Chinese, including those born in Canada, have to register for an identity card. The act will be repealed in 1947.

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Today -100: May 5, 1923: How do you abolish a relic?

The new Lausanne Conference continues. Britain proposes that no foreigners be arrested in much of Turkey or their homes searched without permission of a non-Turkish judge.

The NY Legislature repeals the state law for enforcing the 18th Amendment. Prohibition enforcement in the state will now be entirely up to the feds. That’s if Gov. Al Smith signs the bill; he plans to hold hearings and pretend that he hasn’t already decided to sign it.

The NY Assembly passes Jimmy Walker’s bill to require the KKK and other non-incorporated groups to file membership lists with the secretary of state.

The All-Russian Church Council names Father Vedensky, the man who shepherded the unfrockification of Patriarch Tikhon, archbishop. It also abolishes relics, says bishops can get married now but clergy aren’t actually required to marry.

There’s a boycott of sugar because of high prices.

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Today -100: May 4, 1923: Of reparations, sacred struggles, long flights, and censorship

In the least surprising news ever, France and Belgium reject Germany’s reparations offer. They insist that Germany must give up the passive resistance campaign and agree to continued occupation. And pay much more money, of course.

The French will try by court-martial 2 Germans in Castrop (in the Ruhr) for cutting off the hair of women who fraternized with French soldiers.

The All-Russian Church Council unfrocks Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon (who is in prison awaiting trial), lifts his excommunication of the Soviet government, calls him a traitor, and abolishes the office of patriarch. The Council explains that Russia is the only government fighting capitalism, which is one of the 7 deadly sins, so “its struggle is a sacred struggle.”

Britain says that when Iraq joins the League of Nations, it will be given its independence (this will indeed happen, though not until 1932).

Two Navy lieutenants fly a monoplane 2,700 miles from Long Island to San Diego in only 27 hours. And an Army dirigible flies 800 miles non-stop.

The bill to repeal NY’s movie censorship fails narrowly in the NY Assembly.

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Today -100: May 3, 1923: Half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting

The “Clean Books” censorship bill dies in the NY Senate, getting only 15 votes. Leading the fight against it is future NYC mayor Jimmy Walker. “No woman was ever ruined by a book,” he says. He notes the same hypocrisy as with the hard-drinking supporters of the Volstead Act: “Some of the best tellers of shabby stories in this Senate have been worrying their hearts out during the debate today about somebody reading something which may not have been good for him or her.”

Germany proposes a total reparation figure of 30 billion marks, which is the equivalent of some money, in installments (funded by foreign loans) (and if those aren’t forthcoming???). This is contingent on no further seizures of securities. And passive resistance will continue as long as the occupation does.

When people are forced out of Mussolini’s government, such as the Catholic Party members last month, he tends to simply abolish their positions. So too the office of Undersecretary of Finance Minister Cesare Maria de Veechi, pushed out for a speech in which he said, “Everything could be right in Italy with half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting.” He’s a general of the national militia (and helped lead the March on Rome), a position he isn’t leaving, so any such rifle shooting would be under his command. De Veechi says he wasn’t speaking for the government, just saying the direction he wanted it to take. Swell. He’ll be named governor of Italian Somaliland later this year.

The Irish Dáil Éireann, while ignoring Éamon de Valera’s peace proposal, votes that hunger-striking prisoners should not be released from prison. Two more rebels are executed.

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Today -100: May 2, 1923: Red is the prettiest color of putsches

The AP says this was the quietest May Day in years in Paris, except for the rioting and the possibly fatally stabbed cop. Just another Tuesday, really.

May Day also passes off quietly in Munich, despite Nazi posters warning of a possible “Red putsch.”

The fabled Delmonico’s Restaurant, where the elite meet to eat, well, met to et, unable to pay its rent, is seized by the cops.

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Today -100: May 1, 1923: Of parallels, high seas, May days, and tubes

Alva Belmont of the National Woman’s Party plans to set up a parallel congress of women to discuss the same issues as the real Congress. And issues the real Congress won’t discuss, like the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Supreme Court rules that the Volstead Act doesn’t apply to US ships on the high (ahem) seas.

Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor prez, says May Day doesn’t mean shit to American workers.

Romanian soldiers fight anti-Semitic students at the University of Bucharest. Students have also built barricades at the University of Jassy. And a bunch of Jewish students have been expelled from the University of Klausenberg after a fight, following what I’m sure was a fair process.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Same.

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Today -100: April 30, 1923: No work under bayonets

France threatens to send troops to reinforce the border between its Lebanon-Syria mandate and Turkey if the latter keeps mobilizing its troops on the border for some reason.

German workers are planning to make May Day an anti-French thing. Slogans: “Keep up the passive resistance in the Ruhr,” “Death rather than slavery,” “No work under bayonets.”

A black janitor at the University of Missouri in Columbia is taken from jail and lynched as white U students cheer. The UMo president says no students participated. Can’t imagine how he’d know that.

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Today -100: April 29, 1923: Of dancing and knitting

Speaking to a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Pres. Harding denies the rumor that the reason he supports the US joining the World Court is because he was told to by international bankers. Some of the transcript of the speech was censored by the White House because Harding was supposedly speaking not as president but as a fellow newspaper editor.

1,000 people are injured at Wembley Stadium when the crowd at a football match invades the field. King George is attending, and took advantage of the chaos to fuck a few geezers up, I’m assuming.

The mayor of Gary, Indiana, Roswell O. Johnson, is sentenced to 18 months in prison for protecting liquor interests in exchange for political favors.  A Gary sheriff & a judge get a year each and dozens of others get jail sentences & fines.

After that attack by Nazis on a Socialist meeting in Munich, Hitler declares the Nazis victims of “Red terror” and says “The hour of decision is struck. Our patience is exhausted.” Hitler, of course, was renowned for his patience. “The Soviets shall in future be answerable with their lives.” The Nazis are claiming that a Jew offered a Nazi 20 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money, to assassinate Hitler. Bavaria bans a Socialist meeting & parade on May Day to prevent violence.

The Michigan State Senate passes a bill for the sterilization of “mentally incompetent” people.

New dancing record:  130 hours (and still going) by Albert Kish. His partner, Bessie Edwards, collapsed at 66 hours but is back from the hospital. (There are also knitting marathons now, one of them anyway, but that one is called after 24 hours. It’s health ‘n safety gone mad.)

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Today -100: April 28, 1923: Of peace in Ireland?, rum, coke, Texas kluxers, and suspect airplane bears

Éamon de Valera issues a proclamation offering peace terms (after a day of house bombings and the like, just to show the IRA isn’t defeated, I guess, which it totally is). And the IRA suspends operations, but does not offer to give up its weapons, which the government says is the prerequisite for talks. De V’s terms: legitimate authority derives from the Irish people, that referenda will decide disputed questions, no loyalty oaths to the British king, etc.

Pres. Harding plans to declare a national emergency to use the Navy to stop rum-running in the Caribbean. There are some difficulties over whether he can actually do that and which department would pay for it (not us, sez the Navy).

France says it will seize all coke (er, the coal kind) in the Ruhr, with harsh penalties for anyone who gets in their way. As part of this, all public bathhouses will be closed.

Bavarian Nazis (a term which won’t be in use for some years, by the way, and not by the Nazis, but the policy of this blog is to call a Nazi a fucking Nazi) attack a Socialist meeting. Police give up on intervening in the violence when the Nazis start shooting.

Former US Sen. Henry Hollis (D-NH, 1913-19) is now a polygamist. He got a divorce in Bulgaria last year and then remarried in Italy, but now the government of Bulgaria has decided it doesn’t recognize the Unitarian church that granted him the divorce, and has closed the church.

During a concert in the Texas Legislature chamber performed by the St. John Orphanage for Negroes, 70 Klansmen in full regalia stroll in, presumably interrupting the music, hand some money to the chorus’s leader, then give a little speech about the principles of the Klan.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Suspect airplane bears are the worst kind of airplane bears.

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Today -100: April 27, 1923: Of simple Scots maids, women hunger striking and/or smoking

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Prince Albert, 27 – you know, the King’s Speech guy – at this point 3rd in line to the throne, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 22. The marriage is considered “modern” because he’s marrying a filthy commoner (her parents are only a Scottish earl and a countess, so I guess commoner but not commonest).

Éamon de Valera was not captured. The Irish Free State executes another rebel, but releases Nellie Ryan and Annie O’Neil, who were hunger-striking. Ryan is the sister-in-law of Defence Minister Richard Mulcahy.

The University of Maryland suspends 2 women students for smoking. The university president is now threatening never to let them back, because they’ve hired a lawyer.

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Today -100: April 26, 1923: I feel as clean as snow

Éamon de Valera is reported to have been captured and the news kept secret for several days.

He has not been captured.

The AP has a profile on 23-year-old Russian judge Anna Gluzman, if by profile you mean “She is slim and short, not at all pretty: her brown wavy hair is bobbed and parted on the side like a man’s”. Like a man’s!

In the Bavarian Diet, a Socialist measure to dissolve the extremist “storm organizations,” Nazi groups among others, is defeated by a large majority. Bavarian Interior Minister Franz Schweyer defends such groups as healthy and a natural outgrowth of the will of the people to change unbearable circumstances and “is perfectly understandable and to be hailed.” Schweyer was pretty anti-Nazi, even before being made a prisoner during the Beer Hall Putsch and thrown into prison in the ‘30s, so I don’t understand this.

There’s also a fight in the national Reichstag over a bill against breaking up meetings which is aimed at the workers rather than the far right.

The Pennsylvania Legislature bans any city adopting daylight saving. Philadelphia says fuck that and asks everyone to do it anyway.

Former Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo gets out of prison after serving 10 full days for contempt of court. He says “I feel as clean as snow, purged of any suggestion of contempt.” And he’ll be running for governor.

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Today -100: April 25, 1923: Oh good, we were worried about that cellar door

A second Lausanne Conference opens, and...

The conference was supposed to discuss only economic & financial matters, but the Turkeys opened, arrogantly I guess, with a demand that France and Britain set a date for the evacuation of Constantinople and Chanak.

Speaking to the annual Associated Press lunch, Pres. Harding repeats his desire to join the World Court, denying that it’s a slippery slope to joining the League of Nations, which he says the US won’t do “by the side door, back door, or cellar door.”

The New York Legislature repeals the Lusk Anti-Sedition Laws, 8 Republicans from NYC joining all Democrats.

16 dance marathoners give up. Evidently dancing on a fishing boat outside the 3-mile limit to avoid police interference just leads to sea sickness.

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Today -100: April 24, 1923: Of recognition, white man’s governments, patriarchs, compulsory matrimony, and head-measuring

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes announces that there will be a joint Mexican-American commission that might even lead to the US finally recognizing the Mexican government.

The Supreme Court hears arguments in 4 cases about laws in California and Washington barring Asians from owning or leasing land. Chief Justice William Howard Taft asks Cal. Attorney General Ulysses Webb “what the Japanese are doing to which you take objection.” Webb responds that “The white people refuse to assimilate with the Japanese, and as the Japanese line advances we retreat, and we do not like to retreat,” which you’ll have noticed is about white racism, not about the Japanese doing anything objectionable. Webb says “We had one race problem which was settled by the Civil War. There is another growing up now on the Pacific Coast that is more threatening. We have already lost the Philippines. The Japanese dominate there now. We believe this Government is a white man’s government.” Anyway, this guy was California’s attorney general for 37 years (1902-39).

The trial by Russia of Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon is postponed indefinitely.

The Turkish Assembly rejects a bill requiring everyone to be married by 25 and produce a child every 3 years.

NYC Police Commissioner Enright orders police to stop dance marathons at 12 hours, when they’re just, you know, getting started.

The British government won’t limit the amount of wine & spirits going to the Bahamas, which has seen a large increase recently. They admit that’s because it’s smuggled into the US but says if they stopped it the US would just get its illegal booze from Haiti or wherever.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 23, 1923: Of bobbed-hair girl judges, dancing, patriarchs, and mummies

Headline of the Day -100:  

There’s a bill in the NY Legislature to allow children to go to the movies without adults, which I didn’t realize they couldn’t. Under the bill they’d be allowed, but only in separate a children’s section, with a matron in charge. The NY Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children is against the bill, because “it is unthinkable that children, and especially growing boys and girls, should be thus herded together indiscriminately in darkened auditoriums” and what if there were a fire panic?

New dancing record: 102 hours, 30 minutes, and the dude, R.J. Newman in Dallas, is still going. Surgeon General Hugo Cumming warns of the dangers of prolonged dancing: possible dilation of the heart, sudden death, shattered nervous systems leaving them prey to disease...

Russia is about to put on trial Dr. Tikhon, Patriarch of all the Russias of the Russian Orthodox Church. The press claims to have a confession by Tikhon admitting to having had contact with Whites such as Adm. Kolchak: The Night Stalker, conniving with British and French consuls, blessing the Tsar and his family, calling for resistance to the seizure of church property, etc.

Headline of the Day -100:  

I could explain that, but it would just be a let-down.

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Today -100: April 22, 1923: With us it was a case of smoke or die

It seems the woodcutters of South Fox Island in Lake Michigan were not actually starving to death, despite the story told by the 3 who made the perilous journey to the mainland. 6 airplanes were sent to bring in supplies. 2 of them crashed on the icy airstrip, one is marooned with engine trouble, and one sensibly dropped its packages on the camp without landing. What the woodcutters were actually out of was tobacco, which they hoped would be included with the food parcels (was it, though? the article doesn’t say). “With us it was a case of smoke or die.”

The Associated Press reports “the first inkling” that French forces have been attacking Taza tribespeople in northern Morocco for the last 9 days, although presumably the Taza had some inkling that they were being shelled and bombed by planes (yes, I’m thinking of the “secret bombing” of Cambodia).

A story from the Jewish Telegraph Agency about anti-Semitic violence at the University of Bucharest astonishingly reinforces anti-Semitic views by referring to “Rumanian students” attacking “Jewish students.” Ditto at the University of Czernowitz, where Jewish students are forced out of the grounds and lectures are suspended.

Prohibition Commissioner Roy Asa Haynes suspends 4 agents, including the South Carolina state director after agents shoot at a car that turns out to contain 2 YWCA workers, blowing out its tire.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 21, 1923: Of knaves & pustifications

Republicans are pleading with Harding to drop his plan to join the World Court.

Ireland applies to join the League of Nations.

The House of Commons gets to vote on total prohibition for the first time. It votes no, 236-14.

Novelist Upton Sinclair wins a libel case in Austria against Max Hussarek for a book review in which the former prime minister called him a “knave.” Hussarek defended the case claiming pustification. That’s a NYT typo, not a real word, but I had to look it up just to make sure it wasn’t an Austrian legal term or something. That said, pustification should totally be a real word. Anyway, Sinclair is awarded 500,000 crowns, which is the equivalent of some money.

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Today -100: April 20, 1923: Of internationals, stürmers, and dancing

An International Middle Class Conference of all the national middle-class political parties is called for Berne in September to create a Bourgie International.

A mob of unemployed people besiege the city hall in Mülheim on the Ruhr. Is it a Communist-Syndicalist plot or just pissed-off poor people? Mülheim is not one of the towns occupied by the French, but city authorities ask the French to help, because there are few cops left in the town after the French disbanded the Security Police. The French refuse to intervene because why would they want to stop Germans fighting each other?

New newspaper: Der Stürmer. Not an official Nazi paper but, you know, a Nazi paper.

New dancing record: Jane Murray of Cleveland, a waitress, 90 hours and 10 minutes. While doing that, she also set the couples’ record, at 57 hours, before her partner dropped out (wimp).

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Today -100: April 19, 1923: America is dancing herself into war

Yankee Stadium opens. Babe Ruth hits its first home run. Yay.

The Florida Legislature’s lower house votes to keep the peonage system of leasing out convicts, but abolish flogging.

In Orange, Texas, a mob gathers outside the jail holding Clarence Smith, a black man accused of writing improper notes to white women. Before they can lynch him, he cuts his throat and is now dying. “The crowd was quieted.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Bavarian government thinks the Leipzig court’s warrants on Hitler and two editors should be executed.

The Polish National Assembly rejects the Jewish deputies’ proposal for consideration (I assume that means debate/discussion) of the recent anti-Semitic riots. Nationalist deputies then physically attack the Jewish deputies as they walk out. (I assume there isn’t an actual Jewish Party; would be nice to know their actual party affiliation[s]).

New (sigh) dancing record:  Arthur Klein of Cleveland, 82 hours and still going (he’ll make it to 88 hours only to have his record immediately broken). Also, just since yesterday’s paper there have been new records set for women & for couples. Vera Sheppard, a record-setter Tuesday, says “The only thing that annoyed me was having a man’s arm around me all the time.”  The D.C. police can’t find any law they can use to stop dance marathons there, although they would dearly love to, according to Mina Van Winkle, who is chief of the D.C. police women’s bureau and not, as her name suggests, a character in a mediocre children’s book. “A dance epidemic always precedes national disaster, as clouds precede a storm,” she says. “America is dancing herself into war.”

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Today -100: April 18, 1923: Of death lashes, duces in a hurry, dancing, patriotic textbooks, chekas, and pharaonic umbrellas

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Florida Legislature’s investigation of the peonage system hears
from a guard at the Putnam Lumber Company prison camp, who says 1 to 5 rented prisoners were whipped every day, and describes the death of Martin Tabert, who’d been convicted of stowing away on a freight train, after being flogged over 100 times. Tallahassee Sheriff Jones was paid $20 per prisoner. Plus fees. Which it sounds like he kept. So he ordered his deputies out in force to meet trains and grab people riding the rails. Oh, and Tabert’s parents sent money to pay his fine, but Jones sent it back because he’d already sold Tabert into slavery. Sorry, peonage.

Benito Mussolini gets a speeding ticket.

That dance marathon that fox-trotted its way from New York to New Jersey back to New York and then over to Connecticut has been halted by local cops, although they kindly wait until Vera Sheppard of Long Island City set a new record of 69 hours. Madeline Gottshick of Cleveland, holder of the previous record of 66 hours, 6 minutes, casts doubt on Sheppard’s claim, since some of those 69 hours were spent dancing in vans between venues, unwitnessed.

Incidentally, aviation endurance records are also being broken, with an army monoplane flying non-stop for 36 hours.

The NY Senate passes the Higgins Patriotic Text Book Bill 35-9. Textbooks must emphasize the US’s victories in every war it has fought. Mostly this bill is about the Revolutionary War, as some books have been deemed too pro-British.  So textbooks must now uphold the existence of the British oppressions mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Which has to be quoted in its entirety. And they must not mention the human failings of revolutionaries unless their virtues are given at least equal prominence.

Hitler gets his summons to the Leipzig Supreme Court. His newspaper says he won’t go and calls the court the “Leipzig Cheka.” Sick burn, Adolf.

The Soviet Union says it will accept 300,000 Armenian refugees from Turkey.

King Fuad of Egypt is not happy with the proposed constitution written by the constitution commission because it says the people are the source of power and does not give him absolute powers. I don’t know what the point of a constitution even is if the king has absolute powers.

Speaking of Egyptian kings, Tut-a-mania continues, with fashion shows, balls, and of course umbrellas, just like the boy king’s slaves carried, probably.

Available at Gimbels.

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Today -100: April 17, 1923: Of bilbos, death dancing, dead whales & ghostly accusers

Former Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo is sent to jail for 30 days for contempt of court for failing to show up as a witness in the lawsuit against current Gov. Lee Russell brought by the secretary he impregnated and forced to get an abortion.  Which means Bilbo will have to make his announcement that he is running for governor again from the Lafayette County Jail. (Update: the 30-day sentence will be reduced to 10, with no fine.)

Pres. Harding allows former congresscritter Alice Robertson to be appointed as a welfare worker in the Veterans Bureau without having to take a civil service exam.

Tory newspapers in Britain complain about a “conspiracy” to force PM Bonar Law’s resignation by saying he’s about to resign because of ill health.

While Boston, Flint, Buffalo & other cities are shutting down dance marathons, Chicago’s health commissioner Herman Bundesen says “Chicago health authorities will not interfere with any one who wishes to dance himself to death.”

New dancing record: Magdalene Williams of Houston (again), 65 hours and 53 minutes.

Catholic Party members in Mussolini’s government resign after he demands they pledge to support him personally rather than their party congress, which recently passed resolutions implying the party only supported the Fascist government temporarily. The highest-ranking of the resignees was minister of public works.

I’ve misplaced the link and can’t be arsed to find it, but there’s a legal dispute over who owns a dead whale, so the federal district court in Mississippi orders the evidence, all 75 tons of it, brought to court.

In Pittsburgh, Peter Capella is on trial for the murder of Rudolf Capella (no relation! but he was a boarder in the Capella – no relation!) – family house). 16-year-old Rudolf clearly committed suicide 2 years ago, but his mother Magdalene testifies that 6 months later she had a dream in which Rudolf told her that Peter murdered him. (The NYT will not follow up this story).

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Today -100: April 16, 1923: Dance dance dance

A letter from Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William Lloyd Garrison and an impressive activist for women’s suffrage, peace, and civil rights in her own right, responds to a story I must have missed about the War Dept planning to investigate pacifist groups because War Secretary John Wingate Weeks thinks pacifists are all socialists or Communists. She says they aren’t.

A dance marathon in New York is disrupted by police enforcing a law against events going on dangerously long, originally enacted against bicycle races. The couples dance into a van, dance onto the ferry, and continue dancing in Jersey, as was the custom. (Update: tomorrow they’ll continue dancing back to NY, chased out by the Fort Lee cops,  then to Connecticut). Mayor James Curley of Boston says he will ban dance marathons, even in private homes, as a public nuisance. And there’s a new dancing record: 65½ hours, Magdalene Williams of Houston. “A waiting limousine carried her to a Turkish bath”. Before that, there were another couple of records broken since yesterday, though an L. Kessler was disqualified “as a result of his apparent inability to keep time to the music or to do any real dancing.”

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Today -100: April 15, 1923: We won’t talk

The German court for safeguarding the Republic in Leipzig has summoned the editors of 2 anti-Semitic newspapers in Bavaria, including the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter. Both intend to resist, saying only Bavarian courts can try them. Hitler expects to receive a summons any day now (I imagine he’s a little insulted he hasn’t yet) and says he won’t go either: “We won’t talk.”

France complains about a speech by Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno at the memorial for those workers killed by French soldiers at the Krupp plant in the Ruhr, in which he used the word “enemy.”

New dancing record: 53 hours, a Miss Goldie Hughes of Houston. Or is it 8 couples and 6 individuals in Baltimore, halted at 53 hours by a police raid. One of the men proposed to his partner after several hours.

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Today -100: April 14, 1923: Of men on horseback, scraps of paper, and cake, so much cake

There have supposedly been two recent assassination attempts on Benito Mussolini (I don’t think there have been), but he continues to expose himself to assassins by using the same entrance to the city, and “Every Sunday Mussolini is seen on horseback traversing the quarter filled with Communists.”

Mussolini would really like to get rid of some of his excess population, and offers to send specially picked farm laborers to make up the US agricultural labor shortage (ag pop dropped by 460,000 in 1922 as black people fled the South). However he won’t allow US officials to inspect the selected immigrants before they leave Italy. The US would have to change its restrictive immigration laws if it wants to take up Italy’s kind offer, which of course it won’t.

William Jennings Bryan addresses the West Virginia Legislature on behalf of a bill to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools, which he says renders the Bible “a scrap of paper.”

The wedding cake of the Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowen-Lyon will be 300 pounds (weight, not money), according to the front page of the NYT.

Westinghouse will not pay license fees for music on its 4 radio stations, so it’ll be all public domain classical music and She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain from now on.

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Today -100: April 13, 1923: Of daylight saving, dinner guests, excesses, peonage, smoking women, and dancing

Belgium has adopted daylight saving time, but France has not. So this summer, trains passing through Belgium from France to Holland or Germany may have to stop for an hour at the border.

Labour members of Glasgow City Council oppose granting Princess Mary the freedom of the city when she visits in August. Their counter-offer that she be invited to dine with 100 unemployed men is voted down.

The Jewish Tribune takes exception to the article on Poland in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica which includes a section, “The Jewish Question,” which says the Eastern Jew is “rarely a producer... a race apart, hated and despised by the rest of the population, devoted to their religion, which is a primitive type of Judaism.” A lot are Hasidic, and really unclean. It says a few hundred were killed 1918-19 in “excesses,” which the Jews have “enormously exaggerated.”

The Florida Legislature is investigating its peonage system, whereby prisoners are leased out to plantations and sometimes flogged to death.

Nicola Sacco is pronounced insane.

The Irish Free State has allegedly captured Count Plunkett, whose name will never not be funny, Mary MacSwiney, and Countess Markievicz, the first woman elected to the British Parliament.

The International Olympic Committee decides to exclude Germany from the 1924 Paris games. Russia won’t be going either, nor will anti-Bolshevik Russian expatriates be allowed to participate. Austria will be allowed in.

A Kansas judge rejects George Day’s petition for divorce, saying cigarette smoking is not sufficient grounds.

New dancing record:  Helene Mayer of Cleveland, 52 hours, 11 minutes.

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Today -100: April 12, 1923: WHO CAN DENY IT???

Now Howard Carter is ill. Who can deny the Curse of Tutankhamen’s Tomb™ now?

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Radio Broadcasting Society says radio stations will continue to broadcast copyrighted songs because the stations perform a public service without profit.

Public services like... substituting for anaesthesia?

Yeah, you really want a patient laughing during their hernia surgery.

A large meeting in Bromberg, northern Poland, protesting Russia’s execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch, demands that all Russian Jews in Poland be interned as hostages and their property confiscated until Archbishop Zepliak is released.

Jack, the dog who used to belong to Nurse Edith Cavell until she was executed as a spy by the Germans in 1915, dies. He will be stuffed and put on display in the British Museum. He’s evidently still on view at the Imperial War Museum.

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Today -100: April 11, 1923: Broken on the wheel of maternity

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes revokes the visa of Ekaterina Kalinin, wife of  Chairman of the Soviet Union’s Executive Committee Mikhail Kalinin, in retaliation for the execution of Vicar General Monsignor Butchkavitsch. Mikhail signed the death warrant. She was due to speak in the US on behalf of the Red Cross and Russian orphans, and was already enjoined from talking about politics. She may or may not already be on her way, but if she arrives she’ll be held at Ellis Island and then deported.

The Irish Free State fatally wounds IRA Chief of Staff, the alliterative Liam Lynch. They think they nearly caught Éamon de Valera as well during the raid.

Harding, just back from a long vacation, will soon start a trans-continental trip, ending in Alaska, but he objects to people referring to it as the re-election campaign trip it so obviously is. He’s even threatening to cancel the trip – I will turn this train around! – if newspapers don’t treat him solely as a president and forget that there is such a thing as a 1924 election.

Margaret Sanger, testifying before the NY Legislature on behalf of a bill allowing doctors to give birth control information, says “the women of this state and country must free themselves from child-bearing. ... Mother love has a chance to develop and become intensified if the children are not born too close together. Hundreds of thousands of women are being bent, bowed and broken on the wheel of maternity.” Assemblycritter Louis Cuvillier (D-NYC) calls birth control advocates “blasphemers” who ought to be “swept from the face of the earth.” So that’s probably a no vote.

The Republican NY Assembly rejects Gov. Al Smith’s request that they repeal the Lusk Anti-Sedition laws.

NYC bans human flies. Harold Lloyd-type human flies, not Jeff Goldblum-type human flies.

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