Today -100: May 20, 1924: Meat juice

Under the Bonus Bill, which has just gone into effect after the Senate overrode Coolidge’s veto 59-26, 3 million+ veterans would receive insurance policies and 389,000 cash of $50 or less. Only vets ranked captain or below in the Army & Marine Corps or lieutenant in the Navy are eligible. What Congress hasn’t done is come up with a way to pay for all this. Rep. Victor Berger (Socialist-Wisc.) suggests making France pay its war debt.

AT&T has figured out how to send photographs over the phone wires. A picture taken in Cleveland was reproduced in New York in a mere 44 minutes (the photo had to be developed at each end).

Medical science is gaining in leaps and bounds. The latest cure is for tuberculosis, and it’s... meat juice!

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Today -100: May 19, 1924: If ever I get the chance to tell my story, I’ll rip the innermost circles of Washington wide open

Charles Forbes, the incredibly corrupt former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, now under indictment, says he’s being “framed” and now “they” are literally trying to murder him. “If ever I get the chance to tell my story, I’ll rip the innermost circles of Washington wide open.” Or go to prison, one or the other.

Pres. Coolidge has hay fever, or “rose fever” as they’re calling it.

Newly elected Reichstag deputy Reinhold Wulle of the National Socialist Freedom Party, the party standing in for the banned Nazi Party, claims that former kaiser Wilhelm approves the election gains of the fascists and gives visitors to Doorn silver swastikas and copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and a translation of Henry Ford’s anti-semitic writings. Dunno if any of this is true.

Hanover voters reject a plebiscite on whether to call a referendum to become a separate province independent of the state of Prussia.

At the Paris Olympics, French spectators hiss the American flag and are “unjustly incensed” when the US rugby team beats the French team, despite the former being mostly college students new to the sport. American spectators are attacked with canes, as was the custom.

Headline of the Day -100: 

 

Now playing:

The Marx Brothers open on Broadway for the first time. Groucho plays Napoleon, I guess. The four brothers are all billed under their real names (Julius, Adolph, Leonard, Herbert), but their stage names are pretty well known from vaudeville. The “She” is Lotta Miles, a name Florence Reutti adopted when she was doing tire ads. Lotta Miles, geddit?

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Today -100: May 18, 1924: Incidentally

The incoming French government, whenever it does come in, plans to reduce military service from 18 months to 9 (this doesn’t affect the 1/3 of the French military that comes from the colonies).

The House of Representatives votes to override Coolidge’s veto of the Bonus Bill 313-78, with 3/4 of the Republicans voting for the bonus.

Russia will expel 100,000 bourgeois high school and college students to make room for proletarian and peasant kids.

Mussolini and Czech Foreign Minister Edvard Beneš agree on a treaty of friendship and whatnot between Italy and Czechoslovakia. Mussolini was worried that France has been gaining too much influence in the Little Entente.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: May 17, 1924: Of taxes and dead suns

Coolidge threatens to veto the tax-cut bill if his veto of the Bonus Bill is overridden.

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann refuse to resign, denying that Nationalists opposed to the Dawes reparations plan represent a majority.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Phew.

Okay, that’s not the astronomical body, but South China President Sun Yat-sen, whose death has been reported, wrongly, for days.

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Today -100: May 16, 1924: Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism

Pres. Coolidge vetoes the Bonus Bill. He points to its considerable commitment of funds for years to come and the threat to tax cuts. He says “Our first concern must be the nation as a whole. This outweighs in its importance the consideration of a class [i.e., veterans] and the latter must yield to the former.” Vets might argue that they’ve already “yielded” quite a bit to the nation as a whole. He says nothing is owed to able-bodied vets because they were just doing every citizen’s “first duty.” “The gratitude of the nation to these veterans cannot be expressed in dollars and cents.” Well not with that attitude, mister. In fact, even trying to pay money for patriotism is an “unworthy indignity which cheapens, debases and destroys it.  ... Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism.” Veterans, he says, don’t even want it, “All our American principles are opposed to it. There is no moral justification for it.”

I especially like how he refers to a bonus for vets as a “gratuity.” And how he presents stiffing them as a matter of principle.

James Foley says he can’t be Boss of Tammany Hall after all after suffering a not-at-all-fake nervous collapse and getting a doctor’s note.

NYC Mayor John Hylan refuses a licence for child actors in Eugene O’Neill’s “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” which I’m sure has nothing at all to do with the play’s inter-racial marriage . So the director reads out the scene. The demonstration some thought might protest the opening night does not occur, although one audience member leaves behind a pamphlet entitled “The Ku Klux Klan.”

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Today -100: May 15, 1924: Of wheelers, zebras, Bosses, and toughs

The Senate committee investigating the indictment of Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-Montana) exonerates him, saying the legal services he contracted to provide Gordon Campbell of Montana were related only to lawsuits and not to any matter before government agencies. The charges against Wheeler were trumped up by then-attorney general Harry Daugherty to derail his investigations of Dirty Harry’s shenanigans.

Abyssinia’s Prince Regent Ras Tafari, the future Emperor Haile Selassie, arrives in France, bearing gifts: lions and zebras. Pres. Millerand plans to keep 2 of the zebras at his country house.

James Foley is elected new Boss of Tammany Hall, whether he likes it or not.

Smith College suspends 3 students for smoking. In a tea room. Not even on campus.

The inquiries into both Teapot Dome and Dirty Harry Daugherty’s Justice Department are winding down. The last witness at the former, the chief petroleum engineer of the Bureau of Mines, is named Frederick B. Tough.

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Today -100: May 14, 1924: Of cooks, circuses, and Klandiana

And this is what happens when you hold the Olympics in Paris: cooks in hotels and restaurants will strike on opening day.

Calvin Coolidge, who it is difficult to picture attending a circus, attends a circus. Evidently he’s really loved circuses since he was a child. He does not eat any peanuts or laugh at the anti-Prohibition jokes, but is observed to applaud most at the bareback riding, trained dogs, and trapeze artistes. His wife likes the clowns. Reporters like counting how many times Coolidge claps at the circus.

The Indiana Ku Klux takes control of its own policies, effectively but not formally seceding from the klannish mother ship. It elects D.C. Stephenson Grand Dragon. Stephenson sues Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans and other national Klan leaders for libel and slander (the details of which are not listed in the NYT), asking $200,000 in damages. Also, the Democratic nominee for governor Carleton McCulloch, who also garnered that hopeless nomination in 1920, says the Republican primary showed that the R’s have been captured by the Klan (Fact Check: true).

In the French parliamentary elections, Blaise Diagne is re-elected for the part of Senegal that’s officially part of France. A negro, as the NYT feels obliged to clarify. He is also mayor of Dakar.

Also, Communist Jacques Doriot wins a seat from Saint-Denis (Paris). He is currently in prison for protesting the Ruhr occupation and inciting troops to disobedience. His election will ensure his release. ....Aaaand later he’ll become a fascist.

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Today -100: May 13, 1924: Philatelists of the world unite!

Rep. John Langley (R-Kentucky) is found guilty of conspiracy to sell whisky, 1,400 cases of it, in 1921. His role in the scheme was to get  the KY prohibition commissioner to authorize the release of that whisky. Langley will be sentenced to 2 years.

Russia complains to Poland about persecution there of the Orthodox Russian church.

Soviet Russia is launching the “Philintern,” an international stamp-collectors association. Possibly because they’re pissed at how many fake Russian stamps are circulating.

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Today -100: May 12, 1924: Of slow-ass radio waves, left cartels, and German days

Capt. T.J.J. See, US Navy astronomer and professor of Mathematics and Being Wrong, has “proven” that radio waves are slower than the speed of light (165,000 miles per second v. 188,000).

France’s governing alliance, the Bloc National, loses the parliamentary elections (and 77 seats) to the Cartel des Gauches, an alliance of the Radicals (who aren’t radical), the Socialists (who aren’t socialist) and a few smaller left-wing groups, but not including the Communists, who get nearly 10% of the votes but fewer than 5% of the seats. PM Raymond Poincaré is definitely out, and probably President Alexandre Millerand as well. Future PM André Tardieu is defeated, but André Marty (Communist), who was sentenced by a court-martial to 20 years for his role in the Black Sea Mutiny, is elected from Paris. The unexpected victory of the left or center-left, whatever you want to call it, is partly a reaction to Poincaré’s Ruhr policy and partly to the decline of the franc and the introduction of new taxes.

German nationalists hold a “German Day” in Halle, with 70,000 goose-stepping vets (some of them in top hats, frock coats and white ties, to the NYT’s amusement) reviewed by acquitted insurrectionist Gen. Erich Ludendorff. Police deny permission to Communists to hold a rival “Worker Day” and violently repress their attempt to hold one anyway, killing 11.

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Today -100: May 11, 1924: Humanity toward Humanity

A cross is burned on the grounds of a Catholic church in Armonk, New York, presumably a Ku Klux Klan warning against building a new chapel.

The Italian Fascists are divided over tactics between those who want Fascism, now that it’s won, to disarm and “become absorbed by the nation,” and those who want it to remain a revolutionary minority and impose its policies by force, if necessary, and to kill Socialists and Communists. These Fascist tendencies are called the Legalists and the Savages.

Eugene O’Neill, “popularly regarded as America’s poet laureate of gloom,” denies that his new play “All God's Chillun Got Wings,” which stars Paul Robeson and Mary Blair as an interracial couple, advocates intermarriage: “I am never the advocate of anything in any play – except humanity toward Humanity.” He says the characters represent no one but themselves.

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Today -100: May 10, 1924: Burned

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) wants a referendum on the Dawes Plan, which they support but which the parties on the far left and far right that did so well in the Reichstag elections do not.

William Burns, head of both the Burns International Detective Agency and the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, resigns the latter post 2 days after admitting that he sent agents to dig up dirt on Democratic senators.

Burns will be replaced, on a (ahem) temporary basis, by 29-year-old J. Edgar Hoover.

The House of Representatives votes 191-171 to reject Coolidge’s request to postpone Japanese exclusion 8 months. And now I understand why he wanted that: so he’d have time to negotiate with Japan on ending the Gentlemen’s Agreement rather than do it unilaterally.

Louisiana hangs 6 Italian men for a single murder committed during a bank robbery. One stabs himself several times with a pocket knife – “where Lamantia had concealed the knife no official could learn.” They hang him anyway, sitting in a chair.

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Today -100: May 9, 1924: Organized rascality is the worst kind of rascality

Worries of a Communist threat in Germany, mostly by encouraging strikes in the Ruhr and elsewhere. The KPD opposes the Dawes Plan on reparations as “enslavement” of Germany. The government worries that France will continue to demand coal reparations at the same levels during the strike and then seize the mines for non-compliance, which does sound very much like something France would do.

Tammany fails to elect a new Boss, and appoints a committee of 7 – including 3 women – to recommend one.

Sir James Craig, prime minister of Northern Ireland, says rather than draw the border with the Irish Free State so that Catholic areas in Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh would go to the Free State, the Catholics in those areas should be “swapped” with Protestants in the South.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge has a plan for an entirely new World Court. Possibly he doesn’t know that there already is a World Court, established by, you know, the World, with 45 member nations.

Canadian Sen. J.D. Taylor charges that there is “organized rascality” in the National Railway and Steamship Depts.

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Today -100: May 8, 1924: Of delays, skullduggery, and klandidates

Acceding to Coolidge’s request, Congress will delay the ban on Japanese immigrants 8 months, until March 1925 (Spoiler Alert: no, it won’t). I’m not sure how this is supposed to mollify Japan. He waited to request this delay until after the California primary.

William Burns, head of the Bureau of Investigation, admits to the Senate DOJ committee that former attorney general Harry Daugherty ordered him to send agents to Montana to investigate Sen. Burton Wheeler and assigned other agents to follow witness Gaston Means.

Klan-supported candidate for Indiana governor Ed Jackson wins the Republican primary.

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Today -100: May 7, 1924: It must be rather jolly to be a king

Pres. Coolidge opposes an amendment to the Senate tax bill making tax returns public. However, he’s not specifically threatening to veto the bill; in fact, as a policy he never says in advance whether he’ll veto a bill because it would look like he was trying to dictate to Congress.

Sir James Craig, prime minister of Northern Ireland, says he won’t appoint a representative on the boundary commission. Why such a rush to establish the border between NI and Free State?, he asks. If settlements, treaties and such are to serve reconciliation, they must be signed in their hearts, not on paper, he says. Also, it’s not a political subject, but a matter for the Empire, he says. He really doesn’t want a border agreement, does he?

There is controversy over Charles Sims’s portrait of King George V, possibly because they make him look like a can-can dancer (“paint me like one of your French girls.”) The Daily Express says he looks like a short-sighted man who has mislaid his glasses. The London Times, however, thinks he looks like “it must be rather jolly to be a king.” George is in fact not jollified by the painting and will return it to Sims. The Royal Academy will cut out and burn the head part, then later the rest. The picture below is a surviving version of the original.

England has the first performance of German opera since the war, Wagner’s Das Rheingold, conducted by Bruno Walter. It’s well-received.

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Today -100: May 6, 1924: Of elections, flu cures, and georges

German elections (counting is still going on): While the outcome is presented as a victory for implementation of the Dawes Plan and a consequent de-escalation of hostilities with France, and the coalition government is likely to continue in office, its constituent centrist parties all lose votes. Parties on the right and left which reject the Weimar Republic increase their share of the vote, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) getting 19.5%, the Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP), standing in for the banned Nazis, 6.5%. The Communists (KPD) gain significantly with 12.6%, quadrupling their seats, while the Socialists (SPD) drop to 20%. The NYT says the extreme right didn’t do nearly as well as expected; the NYT will consistently underestimate the threat from the extreme right for the next decade.

The Army tests chlorine gas as a cure for influenza in horses and mules. And it works!

Sens. George Pepper, George Moses, George Norris, George McLean, and Walter George join the Society for the Prevention of Calling Pullman Car Porters “George.”

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Today -100: May 5, 1924: Of music masters, smoke screens, and imperial shoes

Edward Elgar is named Master of the King’s Music.

The Army’s Chemical Warfare Service gets a large bomber to lay down a smoke screen over lower Manhattan. This would be useful in a war to hide the city from an enemy fleet. But not from planes, which rather easily penetrate the smoke because it’s, you know, smoke.

In the first legislative elections in Southern Rhodesia last week, the government of Sir Charles Coghlan (Rhodesia Party) wins 25 or 26 of 30 seats. Only whites are allowed to vote (which is presumably such a given that the NYT story fails to mention it).

Condescending Headline of the Day -100:  

This is the royal tour led by Abyssinia’s Prince Regent Ras Tafari, the future Emperor Haile Selassie.

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Today -100: May 4, 1924: I am for economy

Pres. Coolidge issues his first veto, of a measure to increase pensions to veterans of the Civil War and Mexican-American War and some of their dependents, War of 1812 widows, etc. “I am for economy,” he says. This isn’t the main Bonus Bill, but is a pretty clear indicator of his plans for that one.

NYC Mayor John Hylan opposes Tammany Hall’s plan to make Surrogate (judge) James Foley its leader. This may be another step in Hylan’s ongoing fight with Gov. Al Smith, who favors Foley.

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Today -100: May 3, 1924: Of conditions of violence, avoiding offense, mah-jongg, bigamy, and huge airships

Coolidge bans the shipment of weapons and ammo to Cuba at the request of its government, which is currently fighting a rebellion in Santa Clara province (the US will still sell munitions to the Cuban government). The State Dept statement says Cuba brought “the condition of violence existing in Cuba formally to the attention of the American government.” As long as it was formal.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Senate officially changes the name of “mah jong” to “mah-jongg,” in the course of fixing a 10% tax on mah-jongg sets.

It looks like British holders of $120 million in Confederate bonds may not be able to redeem them.

Paul Adolphe Tholome is convicted of bigamy in Paris, but his lawyer’s plea that he was patriotically helping France, which needs babies, and the fact that it was his first offence, persuades the jury to release him.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Says it’d be like all steampunk and stuff.

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Today -100: May 2, 1924: The Butler will do it

Coolidge appoints William M. Butler chair of the RNC. Butler is a lawyer who ran Cal’s primary campaign. (I was slightly startled to see the headline on this, thinking the Butler referred to was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia U. president and sort of Taft’s running mate in 1913) who can be found elsewhere on the front page because of a kerfuffle over his coming out against prohibition.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says Al Smith won’t enter any primaries in states which have a favorite son candidate. Smith is basically ignoring all primaries in those states which have primaries (I’m feeling too lazy to look up how many that is). FDR also denies that the late Boss Murphy had any secret deals in non-NY states for delegates. Murphy tooootally had secret deals for delegates. Orville Poland, lawyer for the Anti-Saloon League, says FDR is a “false front,” his selection an attempt to give “a garb of respectability” to the anti-prohibition Smith.

Kurt Jahnke, who organized sabotage in the US during the Great War, is running for the Reichstag, as a Nationalist of course. He’s attacking Count Johann von Berstorff, who was the German ambassador to the US before the US entered the war and is currently seeking re-election, as a traitor for providing Jahnke insufficient support back then for fomenting strikes in US ports.

France is also having elections. Only 2 parties, of many, mention women’s suffrage in their platforms, and one wants it introduced only piecemeal. The Christian Socialists want universal women’s suffrage; they have 1 deputy in the outgoing National Assembly.

Former Indiana Gov. Warren T. McCray begins his prison sentence. He says, “I am facing the decree of fate with courage and fortitude and sublime confidence in my individual integrity of purpose.” One of his fellow prisoners aboard the train to the federal pen in Atlanta decides not to face the decree of fate with courage and fortitude and sublime confidence in his individual integrity of purpose, and escapes out a bathroom window.

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Today -100: May 1, 1924: Of ex-governors, Christian democracy, Mays Day, and prisoner exchanges

Former Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray, who resigned yesterday, is sentenced
to 10 years in prison & a $10,000 fine for mail fraud.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt agrees to head Al Smith’s presidential campaign. With that done, Smith says he can now take himself “out of the picture” and focus on governoring.

Smith’s competitor for the D. nomination William Gibbs McAdoo calls for a return to the “Christian democracy” of his father-in-law Woodrow Wilson, saying that materialism and the influence of money are eroding the tone and quality of American citizenship.

The German government bans May Day demonstrations, but the Communist Party says scheiß drauf.

Leon Trotsky says Japan is on the eve of a revolution, although one like the 1905 Russian Revolution rather than the 1917 ones. He denies Russia plans to invade Poland.

Russia exchanges 107 Poles in its prisons for 36 Communists in Polish prisons, 19 of whom are Jewish. 3, however, preferred prison in Poland to life in Russia. Most of the Poles held by Russia, including 6 priests, were in prison for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda; some were held without charge. The article fails to disclose what the Communists in Poland were charged with.

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Today -100: April 30, 1924: Of ex-governors and hamons

Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray resigns.

The Senate Teapot Dome Committee calls Georgia Hamon Rohrer, the widow of Oklahoma oil tycoon Jake Hamon, to ask about his scheming in 1920 to elect Warren G. Harding and gain access to the Navy’s oil reserves. She sits in the witness chair for 15 minutes with a calla lily in her hand while senators discuss just which of them called her and why, none willing to ask her questions, and then they dismiss her. I hope she didn’t come all the way from Oklahoma for this.

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Today -100: April 29, 1924: Of bombs and mail fraud

A Hungarian immigrant who claims to be named Landro Kiss – a likely story – is arrested with a bomb and a pistol near the late Boss Murphy’s home, possibly planning to kill whatever big shots showed up (as well as himself).

Indiana Governor Warren McCray is found guilty of mail fraud. The judge denies bail, saying he’s never seen so many felonies committed by one person. He should get out more.

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Today -100: April 28, 1924: Of faith-healers, dead bosses, the deadly enemy of Germany workers, and flaming hearses

William Jennings Bryan’s wife Mary is seeing a faith-healer for some undisclosed illness. Interesting, I guess, but why is it front-page news?

The death of Tammany Hall’s “Boss” Murphy has heartened the right wing of the Democratic Party (Southerners, klansmen, anti-papists, etc) that they may defeat NY Gov. Al Smith for the presidential nomination. More delegates to the national convention are expected to arrive without instructions, which may make it more difficult for any candidate to get the 2/3rd vote necessary for nomination (Spoiler Alert: hoo boy will it).

In Berlin, Communists attack an election meeting of the Völkisch Freedom Party that they thought Reichstag candidate Erich Ludendorff would attend. But as clashes injure 33 people, one of them stabbed, Ludendorff decides not to go. The Communists were summoned by their newspaper The Red Flag to stop “the deadly enemy of German workers [speaking in] Berlin, the workers’ city.”

The Mexican military capture, court-martial & execute rebel Gen. Juan Alanso (sic?) and 42 lesser officers within one day.

Metaphor of the Day -100:  

15,000 kluxers come out to celebrate Owen Poorbaugh, one of their ilk who died in jail where he was being held for carrying concealed weapons, riot & murder for the Lilly, Pennsylvania contretemps earlier this month. The hearse thing is sadly not a cross-burning gone wrong.

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Today -100: April 27, 1924: Of child labor and bosses

The House of Representatives votes 297 to 69 for a Constitutional amendment to empower Congress to regulate or ban child labor (under 18; an amendment to reduce this to 16 fails, as do attempts to exempt farm labor).

Without “Boss” Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall running his presidential candidacy behind the scenes, NY Gov. Al Smith might be forced to get off his ass and campaign, which he didn’t plan on doing before the Democratic National Convention. It doesn’t help that only Murphy knew how many “connections” he’d made, such as deals with delegates. So I guess everybody gets to re-negotiate their bribes.

Today -100: April 26, 1924: Of dead bosses, coffee, borders, and French postcards,

Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall dies of “acute indigestion” at 65. There won’t be a parade. No, really, there won’t be a parade is something the NYT has to inform us. NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith calls Boss Murphy “a noble, clean, wholesome, right-living man”. The death will require Smith to find someone else to run his presidential campaign. Murphy has no obvious successor at Tammany, so there will be a temporary triumvirate.

Asked for comment, Coolidge says he never met the man.

Chicago has a new Teapot Dome-themed coffee shop. Coffee is delivered via pipe lines. Also opened in 1924, and still around, is the Teapot Dome Diner in Paw Paw, Michigan, a town so nice they named it, well, you know.

Emma Goldman, who promised Germany not to do political stuff while living in Berlin, does political stuff, attempting to make a speech calling for the release of political prisoners in Russia. German Communists break up the meeting before she can finish her speech.

A conference on setting the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State breaks up without agreement, as was the custom. This isn’t about a few niggling miles here and there, but who gets Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh (or parts of them?). The treaty which allowed NI to opt not to join the Free State required, in such an event, plebiscites in those counties. NI politicians don’t want to allow that, because they’d lose.

New Jersey Gov. George Silzer tells Education Commissioner John Enright to tell local school boards to stop asking prospective teachers their religion.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Not looking for pictures of boobies, but a go-slow strike.

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Today -100: April 25, 1924: Of baby’s cries around the world, fake sergeants-at-armses, and blackface comedians

Sen. Nathaniel Dial (D-SC), opposing an appropriation for the relief of starving German children, denies that there is any constitutional authority for heeding “a baby’s cry around the world.” Royal Copeland (D-NY) responds, “For my part, when a baby cries, I don’t stop to think what language it is crying in.” Dial ripostes that Dr. Copeland can’t tell him anything about babies, he has ten of them.

Incidentally, there were 3 congresscritters in 1924 with the first name “Royal.”

Documents of Gaston Means, con man extraordinaire and former Bureau of Investigation agent, supposedly showing Harry Daugherty’s various crimes, have mysteriously disappeared, taken by two men posing as Senate sergeants-at-arms who showed up at his house with a fake order from Sen. Brookhart. At least that’s Means’s story, and he’s sticking with it. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s bullshit.

In a case I believe called Some Fucking Racist v. Some Fucking Racist, D.W. Griffith sues Al Jolson, “the blackface comedian,” for $571,696.72 for walking off a film in 1922. There was no contract, just a gentleman’s agreement.

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Today -100: April 24, 1924: Of treasonable causes, bonuses, bangs, and radios

Disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty says the reason he refused to hand over documents to the Senate was because Sens. Burton Wheeler and Smith Brookhart visited Russia last summer. “I gladly gave up a post of honor rather than contribute to a treasonable cause.” He portrays the investigations into corruption at the DOJ as a Soviet plot to undermine confidence in government, calling it an “unlawful inquisition,” which is the worst kind of inquisition.

The Senate passes a bonus for veterans by a vote 67-17 after an amendment giving them the option to receive it in cash instead of 20-year insurance policies is defeated 47-38. Will Coolidge veto it? In an election year? An amendment to extend the time limit for service eligible for the bonus to include post-war occupation troops in Germany is rejected; Sen. Reed Smoot says they “lived like kings.”

Denmark has its first woman cabinet minister, which only the Soviet Union, the Ukraine and Ireland have had one of so far. Nina Bang of the Social Democrats will be minister of education.

US District Judge Hickenlooper in Cincinnati rules that radio musical broadcasts don’t count as public performances, so stations don’t have to pay copyright holders.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 23, 1924: Amiable non-committal

Out of nowhere, Pres. Coolidge suggests, in a speech broadcast via the telephone on 11 radio stations, that the US might call a new international arms limitation conference – eventually. When this idea recently came up in the Senate, when Cal was, I believe, silent, as was the custom, Dems pointed out that the League of Nations was already working on that. In the speech, Coolidge also promises to crack down on graft and calls for economy in government. The NYT is unimpressed, saying the speech raises no issues, gives “no definite statement of a precise policy,” and reveals “no inner flame of passionate belief.” “It was a masterpiece of amiable non-committal.”

Speaking in Columbus, disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty says in a, dare I say it, Trumpian performance, that all the witnesses against him at the Senate Committee were lying, and indeed he has affidavits from them that they were coerced into doing so. He denies taking any liquor after becoming attorney general or allowing it in his home (he doesn’t say if he’s taken to the booze since being fired, but it does sound very much like he was breaking prohibition law until the minute he got the att. gen. gig). He claims that Sen. Burton Wheeler promised the IWW to get rid of him. “The enemy is at the gate,” he says.

Former prime minister of Newfoundland Sir Richard Squires is arrested for larceny.

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Today -100: April 22, 1924: Of handshakes and lynchings

Sen. Thomas Heflin (D-Alabama) complains that Pres. Coolidge has stopped shaking hands of visitors to the White House. Why, some of the tourists come to the capitol only once in their lifetime. “Boys could tell their children and their children’s children how it was to go into the presence of a real, virile, live, robust president and shake his vigorous hand and have him say a word to them as they passed...”

A black man, Luke Adams, is lynched near Norway, South Carolina for supposedly attacking a white woman.

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Today -100: April 21, 1924: Of bobbed-hair bandits, extracting revolutionary teeth, and junior Sherlocks

After a manhunt by many, many NYPD detectives, the notorious alliterative Bobbed-Hair Bandit of Brooklyn, 20-year-old Celia Cooney, is arrested along with her husband in Jacksonville, Florida, where she gave birth earlier this month to a baby that died after two days. Mr & Mrs Bobbed-Hair are charged with 17 hold-ups. They’ll serve 7 years in prison, where Ed will have his arm crushed in a machinery accident. Celia will die in 1992. There’s a book, more than 500 pages, about her.

Leon Trotsky, who has been ill for months, leading to rumors that he’d been arrested or killed or whatever, reappears, making speeches pointing out the hostility of France and the US towards the USSR. He notes that the US, while it is “trying to digest... all the huge gains it realized from the war” during its current isolationist phase, is stockpiling weapons for future war with Japan or in Europe, in the form of airplanes and poison gas. Dentists use gas, and the US is “preparing to use gas to extract a revolutionary tooth from Europe”.

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. premieres. Partly directed (uncredited) by Fatty Arbuckle.

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Today -100: April 20, 1924: Get into the game and stay in it

Eleanor Roosevelt is vice chair of the NY Democratic State Committee’s women’s division, but the Sunday New York Times Magazine assures us, “Politics has not made a masculine woman of her. Her first interest is her family.” Phew. She says American women are backward in political participation unlike, for example, British women. “Compared with the business of interesting women in politics, the getting of the vote was child’s play.” “My message to women would be: ‘Get into the game and stay in it.’ Throwing mud from the outside won’t help. Building up from the inside will.” The article fails to mention her husband, at all.

In a story about Coolidge making a speech next Tuesday on radio, I notice it is to be “broadcast” on 11 stations, but the headline uses the word “radiated.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1924: Of borders, square deals from klansmen, and honorary Fascists

But what about Mexican immigrants? An amendment to the racist immigration bill is proposed, authorizing a permanent Border Patrol agency to patrol the Mexican and Canadian borders.

Judge A.S. Wells dismisses the 5 charges against former Oklahoma governor J.C. Walton, who was impeached and removed from office last year in part for his war against the Ku Klux Klan. Says Judge Wells: “I hope that J.C. Walton will be fair enough to say that he got a square deal from at least one Klansman.”

Composer Giacomo Puccini is named an honorary Fascist.

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Today -100: April 18, 1924: Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas

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Tourists would now only be able to watch Cal working at his desk as they troop through the Oval Office.

Composers, including John Philip Sousa and Irving Berlin, protest a bill that would allow radio stations to play their copyrighted music without paying royalties. That’s the Dill Bill, by the way, which seems like the starting point of a song, but no one sang one to the Sen. Patents Committee. The composers tell the committee that income from song-writing has dropped 50% in the last year, as free radio play means they can’t sell sheet music. Sousa says, “The Radio Corporation of America gets money, doesn’t it? If they get money out of my tunes, I want some of it, that’s all.”

In the immigration bill, the Senate decides to admit immigrants on the basis of 2% of the 1890 census. It is pointed out that only 1 immigrant would be permitted from Italy, an ally during the Great War, for every 5 Germans. Royal Copeland (D) says as a New Yorker he must speak out for the Jews, although he never met one until he was in college (he’s originally from Michigan).

Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Company merge, becoming the Metro-Goldwyn Corporation (MGM), including not only production but the Lowe chain of theaters.

The Trenton YWCA condemns Atlantic City bathing beauty parades. The local’s president, Miss Pauline Smith, warns, “It was noticed by competent observers that the outlook on life of girls who participated was completely changed. Before the competition they were splendid examples of innocent and pure womanhood. Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas.”

The father of murder victim Ted Grosh, student at Arizona State University, wants to be hangman at the execution of his son’s killer (who is black). The state prison superintendent has no objection.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: April 17, 1924: Of oil, graft, and wooden legs

A commission appointed by Pres. Coolidge says the US may run out of oil soon, and the Navy should be given priority.

Charles R. Forbes, the former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, as well as former assistant director Charles O’Leary and Nathan Thomson, president of the Thomson Kelly Company of Boston, are indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. $3 million (or $5m; unclear) of Bureau property (blankets, bandages, etc) was sold to Thomson for $600,000 under the pretense that it was unusable.

Speaking of veterans, S. Harry Smith wills the false leg he got to replace the leg he lost in the Great War to Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon. Some sort of protest against his compensation being reduced. To be clear, Smith is alive.

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Today -100: April 16, 1924: The man who would not have an ambition for that office would have a dead heart

The NY state Democratic convention nominates Gov. Al Smith for president. The resolution is offered by Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 1920. Smith admits, “The man who would not have an ambition for that office would have a dead heart.” But he plans to just keep on governoring until the national convention, without campaigning. But if the convention should happen to nominate him...

The Senate follows the House in voting for a ban on Japanese immigration, with no debate and by voice vote.

Major General Leonard Wood, Governor-General of the Philippines, a man so general they generaled him twice, warns against granting independence to the Philippines: “We must not be swept off our feet by the purely local and artificial agitation produced by a small group”. It will take many years for the “development of national defense and the building up of individual civic courage,” he says.

Can you beat it?

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Today -100: April 15, 1924: Of troubled periods, veiled threats, independences, and hiding cops

Pres. Coolidge, addressing the Continental Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution, calls on women to vote in this “current troubled period,” presumably referring to the ongoing Senate investigations of his Cabinet members.

The Senate rejects continuing the Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan on immigration, 76-2, and will ban immigration by any Japanese. There’s a lot of bitching about Japan’s “veiled threat” (the ambassador warned of “grave consequences” if this passed) and how it’s improper for one country to interfere in the affairs of another, even if those affairs involve racist discrimination against that country’s citizens. Otherwise, the Senate changes the basis on which the 2% per country limit is based from the 1890 census to the 1910 and sets a total limit of 161,000 per year, less than half of the number coming now.

Hilton Philipson, husband of British MP Mabel Philipson, says she may quit Parliament soon because she’d probably prefer looking after their three children. Considering that she will (Spoiler Alert) not quit and will stand for, and win, re-election, one has to wonder why Hilton is airing this in public.

The chair of the House Insular Affairs Committee, Louis Fairfield of, where else, Indiana, says he’ll introduce a bill for a plebiscite in the Philippines on independence – in 25 years.

The Irish Free State wants to send an ambassador to the US, but the US says that’s up to the British. Canada is also considering separate representation in Washington.

Greece celebrates the end of monarchy by declaring martial law and censoring royalist newspapers. Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis will serve as provisional governor until a real president is chosen.

British Home Sec. Arthur Henderson defends the actions of 2 cops discovered spying on a Communist Party meeting in London from underneath the platform.

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Today -100: April 14, 1924: Of veeps, doll houses, ex-kings, borgs, and anglers

Coolidge already has almost all the delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination, so everyone’s thinking about running mates. Frank Lowden, to win over farmers? Gen. Charles Dawes? Navy Sec. Curtis Wilbur?

British prohibitionists complain that Queen Mary’s doll house, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, has a wine cellar. With real wine in teeny bottles.

The Greek referendum abolishes the monarchy.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Aloha means “hello,” “goodbye” and “resistance is futile.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

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Today -100: April 13, 1924: Of immigration and investigations

The House passes the Johnson Immigration Act, including the provision banning Japanese people. Not even a roll call on that part.

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon complains that Senate investigations of the Bureau of Internal Revenue have destroyed its morale and work has ground to a halt. He says that like it’s a bad thing.

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Today -100: April 12, 1924: Unwarranted intrusion is the worst kind of intrusion

Pres. Coolidge complains to the Senate that its investigation of Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon is “government by lawlessness” and “unwarranted intrusion.” Cal says the Committee’s demands go beyond “legitimate requirements” – it wants a list of companies Mellon is involved with. Mellon is especially worried about the Finance Committee hiring Francis Heney as investigator. Heney is famous for rooting out corruption in San Francisco and elsewhere, but the controversy is that his expenses will be paid personally by Sen. James Couzens (R-Michigan), who will also pay for lawyers and accountants, because no one had allocated funds for them and Couzens is quite rich. Mellon, who is also quite rich, calls it a “private inquisition.” Dems are suggesting that Coolidge is trying to scupper the investigations altogether and are resentful of his scolding tone.

There’s a hung jury in Indiana Gov. Warren McCray’s embezzlement trial.

Japan protests the US immigration bill, which passed the House and is pending in the Senate The note marks the first time the terms of the 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” are made public (Japan agreed to restrict emigration to the US, the US to allow families of existing immigrants to come and not to segregate Japanese children in schools).

Japan will extend military conscription to South Sakhalin and then to other colonies, but not to Korea or Formosa, because Koreans and Formosans aren’t ethnic Japanese.

John Sloan, believed to be the last survivor of the Mexican-American War, dies at 95. According to Wikipedia, he’s not.

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Today -100: April 11, 1924: Five million free Italian citizens rallied as one man around the symbol of Fascismo

Bureau of Investigation chief William Burns admits sending 3 agents to Montana to investigate Sen. Burton Wheeler, contradicting former attorney general Harry Daugherty’s denial last week.

People like the Dawes Report so much that it’s being suggested that if Coolidge’s candidacy implodes because of all the Harding scandals, Charles Dawes might be a better candidate.

Mussolini’s electoral victory is celebrated in Rome by a crowd of 100,000, probably some of whom are not assholes, probably. He addresses them from the balcony – where else? – of the Foreign Office. “Five million free Italian citizens rallied as one man around the symbol of Fascismo, and I do not allow and we will not allow the Italian people to be insulted by attempts to make the world believe that they were herded to the polls like a flock of conscienceless beasts.” No, the flock of conscienceless beasts didn’t need any herding.

Hiram Johnson denies that he will drop out of the Republican presidential race. He says the party’s reaction to Teapot Dome shows it is “dominated by the unholy alliance between crooked big business and crooked politics.”

Aliens aren’t allowed to own dogs in Pennsylvania, I guess?

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Today -100: April 10, 1924: Just the facts, ma’am

Just one day after that Federal Grand Judy (sic) (the NYT is really surpassing itself with the typos lately) indicted Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-Montana), the Senate votes unanimously to form a committee to investigate “the facts.” Wheeler says the foreman of the grand jury is one of his most bitter enemies and the federal DA is a guy Wheeler refused to endorse for a judgeship. It’s certainly the case that the DOJ presented “evidence” to the grand jury, presumably under then-Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty’s orders.

Coolidge victories in primaries in Michigan, Illinois and Nebraska seem to doom Hiram Johnson’s campaign.

The Dawes Committee reports its plan for German reparations, which will be paid on a sliding scale depending on the German economy (so it doesn’t set an actual amount). France and Belgium should end their economic control over the Ruhr but can maintain the military occupation.

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Today -100: April 9, 1924: Selfish political partisanship it is then

Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-Montana) is indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly taking money, after he was elected but before his term started, to influence the granting by the Interior Dept of oil and gas prospecting permits. This looks very much like an attempt by the RNC and the DOJ to ratfuck Wheeler’s investigations into Harry Daugherty’s Justice Department. Wheeler says it’s “a pure and unadulterated frame-up,” which is the worst (or possibly best?) kind of frame-up. Daugherty denies the “evidence” wasn’t dug up by those Bureau of Investigation agents he sent to Montana to look into Wheeler, but by the Post Office.

NY Gov. Al Smith (D) asked the R-dominated State Assembly to put aside “selfish political partisanship” and pass his proposals for four-year gubernatorial terms, an 8-hour day for women, an executive budget, etc. All of which they vote down.

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Today -100: April 8, 1924: We don’t know much about the ether

Prohibition agent Brice Armstrong – which is a very prohibition-agent name – testifies before the Senate DOJ investigating committee that Chicago and federal officials’ interference has kept Chicago wet by preventing prosecutions of saloon keepers and licensing brewing companies known to violate the law.

The minority Labour government is defeated in Parliament on a bill to prevent evictions of unemployed people and their families. It’s not being treated as a confidence vote, so Labour stays in power.

The Fascist-dominated coalition wins the Italian parliamentary elections with 65% of the vote on a high turnout. So The Duck didn’t even have to rig the electoral law and he didn’t see a need to unleash his thugs on opposition voters this time. Well, two dead in election clashes, but by Italian standards... This, the first election since 1921, puts a democratic imprimatur on Mussolini’s March on Rome.

The Senate passes a bill limiting radio licenses to 2 years. The bill says that the “ether” is the “inalienable possession of the people of the United States and their Government.” What does ether mean? The bill’s author, Robert Howell (R-Neb.), has no idea: “We don’t know much about the ether. We haven’t been able to investigate it.”

Sen. Samuel Shortridge (R-Cal.) says immigration is the most important issue facing the nation. By which he means excluding Asians, who are “neither racially, industrially nor socially desirable.”

Columbia U. rejects the request of obnoxious law students to eject negro law student Frederick W. Wells from the dorms. There’s been something of a backlash among students against the racists. The burning cross didn’t help.

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Today -100: April 7, 1924: Of captives and plebiscites of devotion

Pope Pius is thinking about attending a Knights of Columbus event in Rome. This would be the first time a pope has left the Vatican since 1870; they’ve been proclaiming themselves “captives” of the Italian state. (Update: it won’t happen. The pope will make his way to the K of C building via a circuitous route through various buildings, some of which they’ll cut entrances into so he doesn’t have to cross into Rome proper).

Italy’s parliamentary elections, or as the Fascists term them, “the nation’s plebiscite of devotion to Mussolini,” are carried out with almost no violence.

Germany is also holding federal and state elections. In Bavaria, the Völkisch-Sozialer Block, which the NYT thinks is run by Hitler (or “August Hitler,” as they call him) but which is more like Nazi-adjacent although the followers of ol’ August are voting for it in the absence of the National Socialist Party from the ballot, comes in just a few votes behind the Social Democrats but well behind the Bavarian People’s Party which nevertheless shed a lot of votes to the far-right.

Romania puts the universities under martial law to stop anti-semitic attacks. Student and prof pogromists will now be tried by military courts – civilian courts have tended to acquit.

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Today -100: April 6, 1924: Kluxers vs. townies

The Ku Klux Klan holds a little spook-a-thon outside Lilly, Pennsylvania. Afterwards 500 kluxers go to the train station to take a special train to Johnstown. Locals turn a fire hose on them, and they shoot into the crowd, killing 4. Then they get on their train; 60 are arrested in Johnstown for carrying concealed weapons. I’m not sure why the Klan picked Lilly, a mining town, for their shindig. It doesn’t sound like any of the  kluxers are from there.

Bulgaria’s supreme court orders the Communist Party & the Labor Party dissolved. Well, they did try an uprising last year. The state will get their property.

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Today -100: April 5, 1924: Of jams and comparative clams

William Burns, head of the Bureau of Investigation, testifies to the Senate DOJ Committee that Heber Votaw, Pres. Harding’s brother-in-law, who was appointed superintendent of prisons by Harry Daugherty, stifled an investigation into the smuggling of drugs into Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The former warden, J.E. Dyche, also testifies to this and says the smuggling is still going on. He was fired by the inspector of prisons, who told him it was because Daugherty was in a “jam.”

Burns also accuses the former attorney general of ordering him to cease investigations into whisky deals that would have led to prominent men.

The NYT finds Italians apathetic about next week’s elections. Thanks to Mussolini having altered the electoral law, the Fascists are a shoo-in, so the campaign “take[s] place in comparative clam” [sic]. With comparative linguine, presumably. The violence this time is sporadic, unlike the wide-scale organized violence of previous elections.

In Bucharest, a group of student anti-semites assault Aristide Blank, a big Romanian banker.

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