Today -100: May 26, 1923: Of steel, women voters, lusks, and censors

A committee of steel bosses appointed by Elbert Gary, the founder of US Steel, at Pres. Harding’s request to investigate union demands for an  8-hour day, says that after thorough investigation, the 12-hour day in the steel industry is perfectly fine, and certainly not injurious to workers in any way. And steel workers aren’t demanding the 8-hour day, they like the extra pay. Gary had to leave the stage during his reading of the report when he became ill, possibly from suppressed snickering. Harding is said to be disappointed by the committee’s report, but what the hell did he expect?

A new New York law allows women voters to merely declare themselves over 21 rather than give their exact age.

And Gov. Alfred E. Smith signs the repeal of the Lusk laws requiring teachers in public schools to be subject to loyalty tests and for private schools as a whole to be subject to a similar test.

The chief British movie censor explains the 67 things that get American films banned, including the depiction of Jesus, cruelty to animals or children, disparagement of public characters, over-long death-bed scenes, too much revolver shooting, girls participating in crimes, drunk girls, women being branded, or the words “hell” or “devil.” 

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Today -100: May 25, 1923: We went to the Ruhr to get paid

Chinese government troops attack the Shantung bandits holding those train passengers.

Supposedly, the bandits got the idea for the train derailment from the movies.

Communists seize and burn the Gelsenkirchen (Ruhr) police hq and fight the citizens’... militia? neighborhood watch? and firemen. 8 dead. They propose a group of 400 workers – 100 Socialist, 100 Communist, 200 trade union – to take over the policing of the town, since the French fired all the security police in February. In the meantime, they enforce food price reductions. And then the looting begins, which is definitely a price reduction. French troops move into the town and... watch. As was the custom, when Germans were fighting Germans.

French PM Raymond Poincaré and his cabinet resign because the Senate refused his demand that it try Deputy Marcel Cachin and other Communists for sedition and/or treason. The deputies opposed the occupation of the Ruhr, but the Senate (in its role as high court) decides it’s not its job to try the cases – there are courts, you know. Pres. Millerand refuses to accept the resignations and Poincaré agrees to stay, although he had argued “we cannot allow these Communist conspiracies.”

Earlier in the day PM P told the National Assembly he would do to Germany what Germany did to France in 1871. He said the occupation of the Ruhr is succeeding in getting coal to France so “we are in no hurry and can wait as long as necessary for Germany to come to her senses.” No comment. “We went to the Ruhr to get paid.”

The new British prime minister’s 24-year-old son, Oliver Baldwin is.... DUM DUM DUM... a socialist. In fact, in 1929 he’ll be elected a Labour member of Parliament, embarrasing daddy no end. He’s already been a prisoner of both Armenian Bolsheviks and then, on his way home, Turkey, which held him 6 months as a suspected Russian spy, or something.

Newly elected Chicago Mayor William Dever says he found the city’s treasury is empty, indeed in deficit, and the municipal government may have to stop operating soon.

William Burns, director of the Bureau of Investigation, tells the Kiwanis Club in Atlantic City that if Congress passes two bills (dunno which ones), he will “drive every radical out of the country and bring the parlor Bolsheviks to their senses.” Every big strike in the US, he says, is caused by Soviet influence and propaganda.

The Connecticut Legislature bans flogging in prisons.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gets a contract to act in motion pictures at $1,000 a week. He is 13 years old. Doug Senior knew nothing about this (Jr. lives with his mother).

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Today -100: May 24, 1923: On every essential point, the Bolshevists propose a conference

Looks like every member of Bonar Law’s Cabinet is willing to continue under Stanley Baldwin, including Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon.

By the way, Baldwin is a cousin of Rudyard Kipling.

Winston Churchill, who earlier in life left the Conservative Party for the Liberals, is thinking of jumping back. If you were wondering why no one really trusted him. Churchill was bounced from Parliament by the voters at the last election, so his old-new party would have to find him a seat.

Russia is conciliatory in response to Britain’s ultimatum to pay compensation for the seizure of a trawler and the execution of alleged spies and withdraw letters the British found rude. Doesn’t seem to promise not to propagandize in India, Afghanistan and Persia, which was another demand. The London Times complains, “On every essential point, the Bolshevists propose a conference.” 

Mussolini purges Capt. Aurelio Padovani and all who follow him from the Naples Fascists for their “grave and prolonged indiscipline.” Padovani will later (1926) die the most Fascist of deaths when a balcony on which he is greeting his followers collapses.

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Today -100: May 23, 1923: Of primes minister, secret enticements, lynching, easter islands, and chicken scrambles

Stanley Baldwin will be the next British prime minister. The process by which he rather than Curzon was chosen is entirely opaque. It’s unclear whether Curzon will continue as foreign secretary, which sounds like more his choice than Baldwin’s.

North Carolina, facing an exodus of its negro population, decides to treat black people better. No, just kidding, they arrest labor agents for “secretly enticing” negroes to go to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, fining them $500 and $1,000 for soliciting labor without a license.

Pennsylvania has new laws making participation in a lynch mob murder and making a kidnapping resulting in death first-degree murder. It also makes trying to seize a prisoner a crime, and being an officer who loses a prisoner to a lynch mob a crime, and it will fine counties in which a lynching occurs $10,000 for their dependents, or the state if there are none.

Lady Constance Lytton, the British suffragette who, frustrated at the favoritism shown by prison authorities in not forcibly feeding her, disguised herself as a commoner and was force fed, has died at 54, her health permanently damaged by that force-feeding.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The earthquake was last November, but only a fishing boat has been there since.

A Brooklyn dry goods store’s “chicken scramble” promotional event is interrupted by the SPCA just as they were about to throw live chickens off the roof, with their legs tied with a ticket for a special prize, for customers to scramble over. The owner is summonsed for Friday, but I think we know what his defense will be: “As god is my witness...”

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Today -100: May 22, 1923: Wait, is there no prime minister?

Fascists in the Naples region resign in large numbers after the central Fascist organization orders them to accept a merger with Nationalist militia types, some of them former Communists who saw which way the wind was blowing. Most of the Neopolitan Fascist leaders, rank & file, and Fascist trade union members, maybe 40,000 in total, quit.

Former (as of yesterday) British prime minister Andrew Bonar Law has an operation for his throat cancer. The king has yet to ask anyone to form a government, waiting for the Conservative Party to make up its own mind.

New dance records: James Karnell in Youngstown, Ohio, at 161 hrs 56 min, and his partner Mrs Yarnell, who gave up at 132 hours but still broke the women’s record.

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Today -100: May 21, 1923: Of unspectacular premiers, lonely Aussies, and hooded parades

Andrew Bonar Law, who the NYT accurately describes as “the most unspectacular of British Premiers,” resigns as British prime minister on the recommendation of his doctors.

Earl Stradbroke, governor of Victoria, visiting England, tries to get English lasses who want to get married to come to Australia, which has an over-abundance of big, manly men who are successful but lonely (not sure if that’s a quote or a paraphrase).

109 Klansman have a little parade in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

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Today -100: May 20, 1923: Of tired & ill premiers, bandit-soldiers, nameless dry agents, and basic stock

Headline of the Day -100:  

In the ongoing Chinese train kidnapping saga, the government has sent army commissions to bandit leaders, but the bandits are now demanding that the army be removed from the whole of Shantung Province, leaving the bandits as the sole military force. Messengers have been going back and forth, bringing messages from the captives saying things like “They’re threatening to eat us!” And the military seem to be refusing government orders to withdraw from the area. Also, troops haven’t been paid in months and are selling ammunition to bandits.

Federal prohibition agents have been slacking off since a new rule that any agent whose name appears in a newspaper will be suspended.

Labor Secretary James Davis says the US will never return to open immigration. He says the current 3% immigration rule doesn’t burden immigration from the UK, Germany and Scandinavia, “the basic stock of the American people,” just those filthy southern Europeans.

Germany seizes a French plane flying over its territory from Prague to Paris. Germany has banned French overflights. The pilot is arrested but the Romanian passenger is allowed to continue, presumably by train.

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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.

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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

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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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