Today -100: November 28, 1924: Of blackshirts, duels, and heresy

In Cairo, the British military arrests 3 (4?) Egyptian aides to former PM Zaghul, including his under-secretary of the interior, for conspiracy against British officials, which makes you wonder about the so-called independence of Egypt. After some inter-governmental kerfuffle, they are handed over to the Egyptian authorities, who are supposed to do something to them, put them on trial or shoot them, I dunno.

Gen. Italo Balbo resigns as Commander-in-Chief of the Blackshirts because of that letter leaked of him ordering Bolgna Fascists to beat up Communists. Mussolini accepts, but it won’t particularly impact Balbo’s rise in the Fascist Party. He remains a deputy, and will soon be put in charge of the Italian air force and later governor-general of Libya. He’ll combine those two when his plane, flying into Libya during World War II, is accidentally shot down by his own side.

Incidentally, Balbo was the guy who earlier this month challenged Garibaldi’s son to a duel. And in Hungary, István Horthy, son of the Regent/Dictator, is sentenced to 4 days in jail for a duel. He’ll also die in a plane accident during the war.

Kamenov and Stalin’s denunciation of Trotsky, which they’ve been circulating among Party leaders, is released to the general public. Stalin accuses Trotsky of “heresy” to Bolshevism and of being a Menshevik. Note that Trotsky is still War Minister.

Speaking of heresy, there’s a debate within the Republican Party over whether to welcome back congresscritters who supported La Follette for president.

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Today -100: November 27, 1924: Intense exasperation

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s wife begins divorce proceedings.

Leonard Kip Rhinelander sues for an annulment of his marriage to Alice Jones, claiming she lied that she was white and thus “the consent of said plaintiff to such marriage was obtained by fraud.” Alice says “I will never give up. I love him dearly and he loves me dearly. All the Rhinelander millions cannot take him from me.”

Gen. Italo Balbo, Commander-in-Chief of the Blackshirts, is suing the newspaper La Voce Repubblicana for libel for accusing him of ordering the killing of a priest. They introduce a letter sent by Balbo last year ordering Bolgna Fascists to suggest to Communists that they leave the region and to beat them up “without exaggeration, but systematically” and “in the grand style” until they do so. Balbo admits writing the letter, but says it was in “a moment of intense exasperation.”

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Today -100: November 26, 1924: Of puzzling crawfish

Charlie Chaplin, 35, marries his second wife, Lita Grey, 16, in Mexico. And yes, she’s pregnant. And yes, they’re doing it in Mexico to avoid possible statutory rape charges. And while there is indeed quite an age difference, his 4th wife, Oona O’Neil, hasn’t even been born yet.

Coolidge invites Charles Dawes to sit in on Cabinet meetings when he becomes vice president in March, as Coolidge did when he was veep, but Dawes declines. We don’t know why.

The Slovak, German, Hungarian and Ruthenian deputies in the Czech Parliament walk out in protest at infringements on their language, school, and property rights. The Slovaks claim there is no such thing as a Czechoslovakian nation.

The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, which they’re calling the Big Christmas Parade, will be tomorrow. Unless it rains, in which case it’ll be Friday. Animals & costumes & clowns but no giant balloons. What’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade without Snoopy?

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Today -100: November 25, 1924: Customs

Egypt gives Lord Allenby the £500,000 blood money in the form of a check, but since some of his other demands were rejected he sends Royal Marines to seize the customs house at Alexandria, as was the, uh, custom. So it’s not about money, it’s about coercing the Egyptian government. Prime Minister Saad Zaghlul then resigns and Senate president Ahmad Ziwar Pasha is given the job. He forms a cabinet almost entirely composed of newbies. And one of them’s a Jew, surprisingly. And one’s a Copt. The Egyptian Parliament votes to appeal to the League of Nations against the British, which will probably go nowhere since Egypt isn’t a member of the League of Nations.

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Today -100: November 24, 1924: Stupid and idiotic violences are, of course, the worst kind of violences

The Egyptian government responds to the British ultimatum, agreeing to apologize for the assassination of Sir Lee Stack but not accept responsibility for it, given that they didn’t actually do it or order it or condone it. They agree to pay the £500,000 but reject all the other demands (irrigation, pulling out of the Sudan, etc). Lord Allenby demands the money by the next day.

Mussolini says Fascism is aware it must stop its “stupid and idiotic violences.”

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Today -100: November 23, 1924: Of ample apologies, confidence, and hard-faced thugs

Lord Allenby, the British High Commissioner of Egypt, presents Saad Zaghlul, the Egyptian prime minister, with a note containing numerous demands in response to the assassination of Sir Lee Stack, the British governor-General of Sudan: a £500,000 fine, an “ample” apology, punishment of those responsible (the assassins have been arrested, presumably after this note was written), a ban on political demonstrations, the withdrawal of Egyptian troops from the Sudan within 24 hours, something about increased irrigation for cotton in the Gezira province of Sudan, and a bunch of other stuff. The Brits are exploiting the situation for all it’s worth and then some. The note says the murder “holds up Egypt as at present governed to the contempt of civilized peoples.” It calls the government “directly responsible” for the assassination, for which it is certainly not directly responsible, because of its “campaign of hostility to British rights and British subjects... founded upon a heedless ingratitude for benefits conferred by Great Britain”.

Arkansas Gov.-Elect Tom Terral says the Democratic Party won’t win national elections if it keeps talking about the Klan. Or, to put it another way, Terral is a member of the Klan.

The Soviet admin is circulating to various army, union etc committees a censure of Leon Trotsky for undermining Leninism.

The Italian Chamber of Deputies (which the opposition parties are boycotting) votes 337-17 for a motion of confidence in Mussolini’s domestic policy (they voted for his foreign policy last week).

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Today -100: November 22, 1924: You now have this great man

Britain’s new Conservative government cancels the two treaties the Labour government negotiated with Russia and will not submit them to Parliament. It’s not clear whether the UK still recognizes the Soviet government. Foreign Sec Austen Chamberlain also tells Russia he’s sure the Zinoviev Letter was totally real. Oh sure it uses terms that the real Zinoviev would never use, but the British government has “information” that “leaves no doubt” that it’s totally real and they “are therefore not prepared to discuss the matter.” The Soviets are warned to knock it off with all the propaganda.

Mussolini has been in some political trouble because of the attacks by Blackshirts on war veterans on Armistice Day, but today a Fascist deputy who was blinded and lost both hands, Carlo Delcroix, president of the Associazione nazionale mutilati e invalidi di guerra, gives a long, fiery speech in support of The Muss: “Every great movement has found and brought to power a great man. You now have this great man. Let it not be said that Italy had at last found a great leader and that envy struck him down.” He addresses former PM Giovanni Giolitti, saying his anti-Fascist speech had “seemed indistinct and far away to me. Perhaps they were drowned by the roar of the river of blood which separates your generation from mine.” After he finishes, the session is suspended in honor of him. Delcroix will break with Mussolini only in 1943, in opposition to the alliance with Germany, but after the war his prosthetic arms will be confiscated as proceeds of the Fascist regime. He’ll return to Parliament, as a monarchist, in 1953.

Warren G. Harding’s widow Florence, aka The Duchess, dies at 64. She’s been living with her doctor.

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Today -100: November 21, 1924: The play is over. I hope I have not bored you.

The test case on income tax publicity begins. A grand jury indicts the Baltimore Daily Post, part of the Scripps chain, which supported La Follette for president. The NYT story rather cheekily repeats the names and tax amounts from the story for which the Post is being prosecuted.

Baron Hans von Ringhausen, a German pilot shot down during the Great War, arrives at Omaha, Nebraska to marry Bertha Wendell, sister of Charles Cummings, the American pilot who shot him down. She was a Red Cross nurse who nursed him back to health. If this (front-page) story sounds made-up to you, it probably is. At any rate Cummings, who appeared in Omaha a few months ago, will shortly vanish, along with the money of everyone who invested in his furniture polish company or sold polish for it. Presumably the sister and the “baron” will also depart.

The Inyo County water insurgents release the LA Aqueduct water.

Gandhi telegrams the opium conference, calling for the suppression of opium traffic.

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But then he would say that, wouldn’t he?

George Bernard Shaw gives the first of a series of broadcasts of his work on the BBC, reading his play “O’Flaherty, V.C.,” doing all the voices and even a bit of singing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a recording of this?

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Today -100: November 20, 1924: Of sirdars, opium, tong heads, and immediate, absolute and complete independence

Sir Lee Stack, the British Governor-General of Sudan and Sirdar (that’s like commander-in-chief) of the Egyptian Army, is wounded, and will die tomorrow, after bombs and bullets are directed at his automobile in Cairo by 7 students, who escape, for the time being.

At the world opium conference in Geneva, the US proposes limiting the production of opium and coca to the amount required for medical and scientific purposes, and banning heroin altogether. There are details, which are obviously unworkable.

The British Columbia Legislature votes for whipping drug traffickers.

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For just a second I had a very different image in my mind of what “tong heads” might be. Possibly bad guys in “The Tick.”

The Philippine Legislature, in its alter ego as the Philippine Commission of Independence, adopts a resolution for “immediate, absolute and complete independence.”

Mary Kolus’s divorce suit is rejected in a Trenton court because her husband being jailed for life for murder doesn’t meet the legal definition of desertion. The court also rejected her charge of infidelity as not proven, despite his conviction being for murdering the husband of his lover.

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Today -100: November 19, 1924: Of aqueducts and amnesties

Inyo County Sheriff Charles Collins calls himself powerless to remove the farmers occupying the L.A. Aqueduct because they’d just blow it up if he tried.

The French Senate grants amnesty to former PM Joseph Caillaux who that body convicted in 1920 (long after his arrest in 1918) on a bullshit high treason charge (“plotting against the external security of the State by maneuvers, machinations and intelligence with the enemy”). They also amnesty former interior minister Louis-Jean Malvy. Prime Minister Édouard Herriot commends the Senate for “forget[ting] and forgiv[ing] those differences of opinion which were considered dangerous during the war.”

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Today -100: November 18, 1924: Of quora, women’s suffrage, and monuments

With the opposition boycotting the Italian parliament, that institution has become so boring that it’s having difficulty maintaining a quorum.

Mussolini supposedly favors women’s suffrage, and there is some move to implement it at least for municipal elections.

Anti-Semites destroy a Potsdam monument to the French Jewish actress “Rachel,” born Elisabeth Félix, which was erected by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV after she performed before him and Czar Nicholas I.

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Today -100: November 17, 1924: We are a nation of the samurai, and to us honor is more than all

 

The US Chamber of Commerce submits its marching orders wish list to Coolidge, including subsidy of the merchant marine, a “scientific” immigration commission, tax stuff, and above all, the ending of the public release of personal income tax return info.

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Hey, you know what I hear is good for calming anger? Opium.

The Japanese are pissed that the British delegate implied that Japanese officials issue opium import certificates corruptly and that some countries have refused to honor those certificates. “We are a nation of the Samurai, and to us honor is more than all.” The conference is not going well.

Vice president-elect Charles Dawes has a hernia operation.

60 or 100 “raiders” from Owens Valley seize the Los Angeles aqueduct, which diverts water to the city to the detriment of Owens Valley agriculture. They open the gates to restore the water to the Owens River. The Inyo County sheriff asks the state to send troops but Gov. Friend Richardson thinks the whole thing will “blow over” in a few days. This is the start of the California Water Wars.

The oldest man in the world is Zora Agrah, is 150 and has been employed as a porter in Constantinople for over 100 years. His 5th wife (he was married to the 1st 3 simultaneously) is 65 “and too old for me,” so he’s looking for a new one.

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Today -100: November 16, 1924: It’s the Chicago way

Chicago Police Chief Morgan Collins will form a “strong-arm squad” 12 cops to battle organized crime (more breaking heads than making arrests, sounds like) and reorganize the detective bureau. “Those detectives who are too lady-like to do business with the gunmen are to be removed,” he says.

Another response to Chicago mob violence: the Sears, Roebuck catalog will no longer sell firearms by mail order.

Organ grinders with monkeys are disappearing from New York streets thanks to the closing of bars and the fact that monkeys are illegal. And you have to have a license to operate a portable organ, not that that ever stops anyone.

The 21 Republican state legislators from Rhode Island are ending their Massachusetts exile and in return Democratic state senators will end their filibuster of the budget. The D’s were trying to alter the ridiculously archaic state constitution, which still has a property qualification for voting and senatorial districts weighted towards rural areas, giving R’s a clear majority of seats despite only garnering 24% of the vote. This stalemate meant there’s been no budget and hence no salaries for officials or money for jails since January, so private citizens and banks stepped up to fund some of that, advancing state employees first 90% of their salaries, then 75%.

Newlyweds Leonard and Alice Rhinelander flee the glare of publicity. Reporters have discovered that Alice’s father was listed as “colored” when he naturalized in the ‘90s, as was her sister Emily on her marriage certificate.

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Today -100: November 15, 1924: Of flowers and duels

Dion O’Banion’s funeral in Chicago is attended by over 10,000 people and features 26 truck loads of flowers, which is what happens when you’re both a mob boss and a florist.

Gen. Italo Balbo, commander of the Fascist National Militia (Italy, of course), “owing to the impossibility of a duel” with Gen. Peppino Garibaldi, who accused the Blackshirts of attacking unarmed veterans, submits the case of his challenge to the Permanent Court of Honor in Florence, whatever that might be. Duels are weird. Another duel, evidently not impossible, takes place between a Fascist deputy and a Liberal one. Whether guns or swords is not mentioned, but the Lib wounds the Fascist 6 times. Good.

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Today -100: November 14, 1924: Numerous convolutions

Belgian Foreign Minister Paul Hymans suggests a new Entente between France, Britain and, of course, Belgium.

Rep. John Philip Hill (R-Maryland) is acquitted of making cider and wine from fruit grown on his “farm,” which he did to challenge the Volstead Act’s distinction between what “farmers” and regular urbanites are allowed to do. The Baltimore jury decides it was not intoxicating, which it certainly was – 12% alcohol. It is not clear if the jury came to this conclusion following a taste test.

The Catholic Church refuses Chicago “slain florist and gang leader” Dion O’Banion a church service but will allow him and his $10,000 silver coffin to be buried in consecrated ground. Science was performed on Mr. O’Banion by the coroner’s physician: “The fissures [in his brain] were not deep, which would indicate O’Banion was not deeply intellectual, but there were numerous convolutions, which showed his mind was shrewd.”

Socialite Leonard Kip Rhinelander marries Alice Beatrice Jones, the daughter of a cab driver. They are 22 and 23, respectively, and white. There will be more about this.

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Today -100: November 13, 1924: Sure, horse thief suppression, why notToday -100: November 13, 1924: Sure, horse thief suppression, why not

Remember the violence in Niles, Ohio a week or two ago between the KKK & anti-kluxers? It seems the former thought they were acting as state police. A Klan organizer got hold of a charter dating from before the Civil War for a group to suppress horse thieves and signed them all up.

The Italian Parliament opens. A Communist deputy informs it that while the Communists aren’t part of the opposition group, they will also be boycotting the Parliament, which he says “has been elected by Matteotti’s murderers.” Former Prime Minister (5 times!) Giovanni Giolitti has announced that he won’t be attending either.

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Today -100: November 12, 1924: Parliament is a bluff with which you hope to cheat public opinion

Sen. Theodore Douglas Robinson is appointed assistant secretary of the Navy, a post which has previously been held by 3 Roosevelts, so of course Robinson is TR’s nephew. In making the appointment, Coolidge is acceding to a death-bed request from Henry Cabot Lodge.

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On the eve of the re-convening of the Italian Parliament after a 4-month hiatus, and with opposition deputies still boycotting in protest at the Matteotti assassination, Mussolini tells a plenary meeting of Fascist and Fascist-supporting deputies, “The reopening of Parliament is a proof of my constitutional intentions.” The opposition deputies, meeting on their own, respond, “Parliament is a bluff with which you hope to cheat public opinion.” M. says the Fascist militia are fully constitutional because they’ve sworn loyalty to the king; the opposition seems to think that’s insufficient. M. says “Not words, but hard facts, prove that the government is marching rapidly and continuously on the road of absolute normality.” I’m not sure “absolute normality” really entails all that marching. The opposition deputies affirm their refusal to return to Parliament and demand new elections, not run by the Fascist regime.

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Today -100: November 11, 1924: If I should let them go, the Opposition would go like that

Sheriff Conn of Skagit County, Washington seizes 225 alleged IWW strikers and pushes them over the county line, as was the custom.

Dion O'Banion, 32-year-old head of Chicago’s North Side Gang, “King of the Beer Runners,” is gunned down in his florist shop by 3 gunsels (I don’t think I’ve ever written that word before), as was the custom. The Chicago gang wars have begun.

College Hill, Ohio Mayor A.L. Pugh and dry agent Greenlee Hahn are on trial for an overly aggressive liquor raid on a home in which a woman was hit and guns pointed. The trial is invaded by a mob singing “How Dry I Am” and threatening to lynch them and burn the town hall. I might not have written up this story but it’s an opportunity to note that “How Dry I Am” was written by Irving Berlin.

Mussolini gives one of those interviews to an American newspaper, the Chicago Tribune in this case, that are I guess intended to be reassuring but never are. He says it’s him who is “holding the Fascisti in check. If I should let them go, as they are pleading, the Opposition would go like that.” Also, he may dissolve Parliament in order to push his policies through.

Hickson W. Field (b.1849) is fighting an attempt by his 2 nieces to have him declared incompetent. I might not have written up this story but he’s evidently one of the last 2 people who were in Ford’s Theatre when Lincoln was shot. (Update: Nope, there are 3, which will drop to 2 next month when Alvin Sherman Wheaton dies).

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Today -100: November 10, 1924: Of fascisti, lodges, and building funds

British Fascisti (the not very successful group which was the first in Britain to use the name Fascist) occupy Trafalgar Square on Armistice Sunday to pre-empt Communists using the site (did they actually plan to or was this just a pretext? Dunno). BF President Brig. Gen. R. B. D. Blakeney makes a speech calling for the exclusion of aliens and a law against sedition.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Massachusetts) dies. Prostate.

At the annual meeting of negro Methodists at Huntington, Long Island, a group of Ku Klux Klan appear, without masks. They give $200 to the building fund and one of them makes a speech saying the Klan is not against black people, just against race-mixing. It stands for racial purity not racial oppression. So that’s okay then.

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Today -100: November 9, 1924: Of non-duels and slapping

Armistice Day in Italy (which they celebrate on the day of the armistice with Austria) was marked by clashes between Fascist militia and veterans, which in turn prompted militia Gen. Varini to challenge Giuseppe Garibaldi’s grandson Peppino to a duel. Garibaldi rejects the challenge, saying he was accusing Mussolini of funding the militias and Varini has no right to stand in for Mussolini.

“He Who Gets Slapped,” a film starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer, premieres. A scientist is betrayed by his wife and his friend, who slaps him in front of the whole Academy of Science. Naturally he becomes a circus clown whose act involves getting slapped. Also, there’s a lion.

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Today -100: November 8, 1924: Just governor, I guess

Irish Pres. W.T. Cosgrave announces an amnesty for political crimes committed during the Civil War.

“Ma” Ferguson continues to claim she’ll be the real governor of Texas, not a proxy for her disgraced husband: “I expect to be governor, just as any man.” Dealing with something that’s never been an issue in the US before, she decides against using the title Madame Governor: “Just governor, I guess.” Her daughter will do the “first lady” hosting stuff, while her husband will be “an interested spectator.”

With Franco-Russian relations re-established, Soviet Ambassador Christian Rakovsky takes possession of the old embassy, which has been occupied by anti-Soviet exiles for the last 7 years. His first question is where is the secret walled room where the secret documents are kept. He’s told there isn’t one – a likely story.

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Today -100: November 7, 1924: Of cabinets, empress dowagers, and legislatresses

New British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin appoints serial party-switcher Winston Churchill chancellor of the Exchequer, a position he has no particular qualifications for; Austen Chamberlain foreign secretary; Leo Amery colonial secretary; and William Joynson-Hicks, the undelightful human with the delightful nickname Jix, home secretary.

Denmark refuses Russia’s demand that it kick out Maria Feodorovna, the 76-year-old former empress of Russia (1881-94), who was born in Denmark.

The Nebraska Legislature will get its first 3 women members, two R’s and a D.

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Today -100: November 6, 1924: But one instrument

Coolidge says his victory “has been brought to pass through the work of a Divine Providence, of which I am but one instrument.”

Robert La Follette is not gracious in defeat (and why should he be?), saying “The American people have chosen to retain in power the reactionary Republican administration with its record of corruption and subservience to the dictates of organized monopoly” but “We have just begun to fight.” He’ll be dead in a few months. His running mate Sen. Burton Wheeler says the people voted for their own material gain and the “exposure of corruption in Washington apparently made no impression upon them.” The NYT is thrilled about the seeming end of the La Follette threat to the two-party system they so love. A second editorial insists that support for Fightin’ Bob in the Northeast “is not a convinced and permanent radicalism but largely a temporary discontent.”

The London Times says “The election, in short, is a vindication of the theory that the United States is under ordinary circumstances essentially a Conservative country.”

The Wisconsin Legislature will get its first women members, three of them, all Republicans.

The last state to elect a woman to its Legislature was South Carolina in 1945.

The new Chinese regime of warlord Feng Yuxiang invades the Forbidden City and kicks out former emperor Puyi, 15, stripping him of his remaining titles.

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Today -100: November 5, 1924: We must creep before we can walk

Calvin Coolidge is elected president. He is only the second veep to become president after the death of their president and then go on to be elected in their own right, the first being Theodore Roosevelt. John W. Davis gets 29% of the popular vote, the lowest of any Dem. candidate before or since – I mean, George McGovern got 37% in 1972. Davis wins every state of the Confederacy plus Oklahoma. La Follette gets 16.6% of the vote.

But the counts aren’t all in, and Davis refuses to concede, because he thinks La Follette votes will prevent Coolidge victories in the West (they won’t) and it could still be thrown into the House.

Republicans add to their majority in both houses of Congress. They will now hold 55 seats in the Senate and 246 in the House.

Al Smith is re-elected as governor of New York, with 3 points over Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who will never run for public office again. His overwhelming support in NYC did it. However the rest of the state government will be dominated by the R’s, who regain control of the State Senate, which the D’s had held by a single vote, increase their majority in the lower house, and take all the other state-wide offices.

That includes Florence E. S. Knapp, who is elected secretary of state, the first woman elected to state-wide office in NY, and the last for fifty (50!) years. She will oversee the census and hire a bunch of her relatives for the project, personally pocketing the salary of her stepdaughter, who didn’t know she was “employed” on the census. Knapp will be convicted of grand larceny and serve a 30-day sentence.

The number of women in the NY State Assembly has increased to one (1), Rhoda Fox Graves (R). There were 2 women elected in 1919, but it’s been a while. Graves will be the first woman elected to the State Senate in the ‘30s.

There will be 88 women in state legislatures.

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (D) is elected governor of Texas with nearly 59% of the votes, as is Nellie Tayloe Ross in Wyoming, replacing her late husband. Because Ross’s is a special election to fill the remainder of his term, she’ll sneak past Ma to become the first woman governor in US history. The third woman governor in US history, Lurleen Wallace, hasn’t even been born yet. And it will be 50 years before there’s a woman governor who isn’t the wife or widow of a male governor.

Mary Norton (D) is elected to Congress from NJ, a seat she’ll hold until 1951. She’s the 5th congresswoman and the first Democratic one. During the campaign, she said women “ought not to have equal rights immediately. We must creep before we can walk.” She’ll be the sole woman in Congress until Florence Kahn (R) is elected from San Francisco in a special election next year to replace her husband Julius after he dies. And next year Edith Nourse Rogers (R) will also win a special election in Massachusetts to replace her dead husband John.

Klan-backed winners include William Pine (R) for Senate from Oklahoma; Rice “Puffed Rice” Means (R) for Senate from Colorado and Clarence Morley (R) for governor; Ben Paulen (R) for governor of Kansas; Ed Jackson (R) governor of Indiana.

Alabama votes to exempt veterans from the poll tax. California votes to allow prize fights. Massachusetts votes to allow women to occupy any state, county or city office and to change their name without losing their commission as a notary public. Oregon establishes a literacy test to vote. Texas levies a valuation tax to fund pensions for Confederate soldiers and their widows. Mandatory public school measures (i.e., banning parochial schools) fail in Washington and Michigan.

You know who didn’t vote? The 20 Rhode Island Republican state senators who fled the state in June to prevent the Senate getting anything done. I had no idea they were still in exile in Massachusetts, but they are. And RI doesn’t have absentee voting.

French composer Gabriel Fauré dies at 79.

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Today -100: November 4, 1924: Of dissension, radio, and extra naps

The state chair of the Democratic Party in Kansas says 2 party campaigners, including the president of the League of Young Democrats, were suspended by the Ku Klux Klan because of their work for the Dems. Grand Dragon Charles McBrayer (McBrayer! I know!) says they were actually suspended for “creating dissension among klansmen.”

Coolidge and Davis both give boring talks carried by a bunch of radio stations (26 for Coolidge, 11 for Davis).

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“Takes extra nap” may be the most Coolidge thing ever. Or the most Biden thing.

Election day! Thus ending the 4th presidential race I’ve covered in this series! Results tomorrow.

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Today -100: November 3, 1924: Suuuuure they’ll win

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Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, son of the German “crown prince” and grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm II, is part of a brawl between members of Stahlhelm, the monarchist veterans’ militia thing, and supporters of the Weimar Republic in Potsdam, although he and his fellow thugs flee after losing the struggle. Willy can, presumably, be a member of a veterans’ group even though he’s just 18 because his grandfather made him an army lieutenant at 10.

In Loup City, Nebraska, one Albert Duster is arrested for attempting to make a political, presumably election, speech in Polish, in violation of a wartime law against foreign languages.

Ohio KKK Grand Dragon Clyde Osborne blames the anti-kluxer violence in Niles on a “few hundred infuriated outsiders, largely of foreign birth” and “confessed enemies of the Republic, with the hidden forces of Sovietism and anarchy, which acknowledge no God. Now is the time for us to find out whether we are to have a free America or a country governed by mobs opposed to peaceful assemblage of law-abiding citizens.” Dude, we’re still trying to find that one out.

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Today -100: November 2, 1924: Of klarades, minority rule, creatures of foreign powers, and persuasion

The Klan parade in Niles, Ohio doesn’t come off after all. The anti-Klannies search cars, trolleys etc for people with kluxer regalia and/or weapons. The article’s unclear on who started the shooting. No one’s dead yet, but 3 are alleged to be dying. The National Guard is sent in. It bans the procession and any public assemblages and it closes the pool halls because of that whole “rhymes with P” thing.

This time it’s Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone claiming that a deadlock in the Electoral College would (somehow) lead to Davis’s running mate Charles Bryan being made president. He says such “minority control of government in a democratic country means chaos. I know of no attempt at such control comparable with this one, unless it be the minority rule of the Soviet government in distracted Russia.”

Éamon de Valera is sentenced by a Belfast court which he calls “the creature of a foreign power” to one month for entering Northern Ireland. I’m not sure from where the British home secretary’s power to ban people derives.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A little obscure here, but Fightin’ Bob says he used his senatorial franking privileges for a friend without reading what was being sent out. He is also accused of saying that the Great War was caused by “international financiers,” and we all know what that means.

The NYT says it’s been a boring presidential campaign because neither of the main parties is running a man people love to hate. So it’s been a campaign of persuasion. Boring, boring persuasion.

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Today -100: November 1, 1924: Of radio, golden streams, and non-denunciations

John W. Davis and Coolidge will both address the nation on a 23-station radio “chain” Monday, Coolidge following Davis.

Davis complains about the huge Republican slush fund (the RNC raised $3,742,962, which is the equivalent of some money, compared to the Democrats’ $552,368), but says the people will vote for a return to honest government even as R’s “pour a golden stream in every doubtful State.” So I guess Republicans liked golden showers well before Trump.

Sorry.

Not sorry.

Sen. George Wharton Pepper of Pennsylvania says if Coolidge denounced the Ku Klux Klan, he’d be breaking the law, somehow.

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Today -100: October 31, 1924: My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement

British elections: the Tories win a super-strong majority of 209, taking parliamentary seats mostly from the Liberals, who lose 3/4 of their seats; that’s them done. Party leader H.H. Asquith loses his Paisley seat to Labourite Edward Mitchell; he says he’ll stand again, but that’s him done as a member of Parliament. Labour loses 40 of its 191 seats, despite increasing its share of the popular vote.

Soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (who does not lose his seat) sez: “My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement. Let ‘em all come.”

There will be 4 women MPs in the new Parliament, down from 8: Lady Nancy Astor, Katharine the Duchess of Atholl (who used to be an anti-suffragist and honestly still may be), Mabel Philipson, and a newcomer, Ellen Wilkinson.

Winston Churchill returns to Parliament, this time as a “Constitutionalist.”

Not a good election for sons of party leaders, the sons of Baldwin and MacDonald failing to get elected to Parliament and Lloyd George’s son Gwilyn losing his seat.

The test case on whether tax return information can be made public is tried in Cleveland, the judge ruling that it can. But many local collectors are still refusing to follow the law.

In a little Roosevelt-on-Roosevelt action, Franklin Delano R. (who used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) says Theodore R. Jr. (who also used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) sucked at the job and Navy morale has plummeted, with officers resigning, ships sinking, men deserting, etc. He says when TR Jr. testified to the Senate Teapot Dome Committee, he displayed “the most charming and complete ignorance about his job that any government official has ever displayed.” Charming and complete ignorance is the best kind of ignorance, er, probably.

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Today -100: October 30, 1924: Oh, c’mon, a mouse president would be AWESOME

Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair orders local tax collectors to open income tax payment records to the public, but some of them are refusing.

Author Frances Hodgson Burnett dies at 74. She wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden. Er, those are three different books. She sued the producers of a play based on Little Lord F. that ran in England, establishing for the first time authors’ rights to control adaptations of their works, something Dickens tried repeatedly to do.

An explosion hits the home of Mayor H.L. Kistler of Niles, Ohio (the birthplace of William McKinley). Kistler had issued a permit for a Ku Klux Klan march for November 1st but denied one for the anti-Klan Knights of the Flaming Circle at the same time, because the Klan had firsties. Kistler & family are ok.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says we need a man president, not a mouse president.

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Today -100: October 29, 1924: If you want to leave things as they are you must get people excited about something else

France recognizes the Soviet Union. Russian emigrés in France protest and say that if they should ever take power in Russia, they won’t recognize any agreements between France and the USSR.

The Georgia Ku Klux Klan is telling kluxers not to vote for Davis for president. The Klan paper Searchlight is claiming Davis recently called in Indianapolis for complete equality, which obviously means intermarriage. The Democrats reply that Davis obviously meant legal equality, not social equality, that would just be silly.

Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone says yeah, Congress made income tax returns public records but it’s still illegal to publish that information, and he has no idea what Congress had in mind there, so there’ll have to be a test case to punt the issue to the courts. In which any newspaper they prosecuted would presumably say, if the Justice Dept doesn’t know what’s illegal why should we? Stone says anyone who publishes returns before the test case does so at their peril.

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says he’s heard that the Zinoviev Letter was discussed in “a certain club in London” 4 days before the Foreign Office even heard of it, and that the clubsmen “were in a state of great jubilation ‘that the thing would come off.’” MacD still won’t say it’s definitely a forgery but he has “suspicions.” Other cabinet members, such as Colonial Sec. J.H. Thomas, are quite clear that it’s “a mean and contemptible fraud.” That’s the worst kind of fraud. The War Secretary says it will be proven a fake in a day or two. The general election is today.

George Bernard Shaw, in a speech in Luton – but for who or what? – points out the cleverness of the old governing class in always “preventing an English election from being fought on an English question” as opposed to an Irish or, in this case, Russian one. “If you want to leave things as they are you must get people excited about something else.”

The Navy secretary lifts the ban on soda pop on Navy ships.

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Today -100: October 28, 1924: Might have originated anywhere

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says that the Foreign Office thinks the Zinoviev Letter is real so he personally thinks it’s real but he hasn’t seen the evidence yet (he’s out in the country election-campaigning; this is a speech in Cardiff) and “so far as I know, the letter might have originated anywhere.” However, “it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper [the Daily Mail, of course, which he later describes as “a certain London newspaper notorious for its false news,” which, you know, fair] and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I, a simple-minded, honest person who puts two and two together, avoid the suspicion – I will not say the conclusion – that the whole thing is a political plot?” He says the Foreign Office’s letter of protest to Russia was a draft that had been prepared so it could be sent immediately if the letter were proven authentic, and it wasn’t supposed to have been sent when it was sent.

After his arrest at Newry for entering Northern Ireland, Éamon de Valera was put over the border and told not to come back. He came back, and is arrested at Derry/Londonderry.

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Today -100: October 27, 1924: Of speaking fees and forgeries

Supposedly Coolidge, last year when he was vice president, demanded $250 plus expenses to address a memorial meeting for veterans. The White House hasn’t denied the story, because it’s true. This is the man who opposes the Bonus because “patriotism can neither be bought not sold.”

Some Cabinet officers in Britain’s Labour government are saying the Zinoviev Letter is a forgery, while others are saying they just don’t know. PM Ramsay MacDonald hasn’t offered an opinion.

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Today -100: October 26, 1924: Of impudent forgeries

A Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) meeting denounces the Zinoviev Letter as an “impudent forgery,” which is the worst kind of forgery. They point out that the Z-Man supposedly signed using a job title he does not possess.

Tsao Kun resigns as president of China, a rather large country I’m mostly ignoring here.

Thomas Edison paid $9,787.83 in income tax.

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Today -100: October 25, 1924: Of crude forgeries, taxes, and exclusions

Headline of the Day -100: 

This is the “Zinoviev Letter” (full text), which is purported to be a directive from Grigori Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), instructing it to stir up shit to put pressure on the government to ratify the trade agreement with Russia. Britain complains to Moscow. The British Secret Service (SIS) has strategically leaked the Letter to the Conservative Party, which in turn has leaked it to the Daily Mail 4 days before the general election. The Russian chargé d’affaires in London calls it a “crude forgery” and says even if it’s real Russia can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the Communist International. The Letter is indeed a forgery. It’s not very different from the sort of exhortations the Comintern routinely sends out, but the start of negotiations in April was accompanied by a moratorium on stirring shit up in Britain. Also, Zinoviev wasn’t in Moscow when he supposedly sent this letter. The CPGB claims never to have received the letter, and there is no evidence now, much less 1924, that it did. The probable source of the Letter is Vladimir Orlov, a tsarist exile and supplier of fake documents to the SIS and others from his forgery factory in Riga.

The British protest was sent by the Foreign Office “in the absence of the Secretary of State,” who happens to also be Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. He was off campaigning and did not authorize it. Deep State working against Labour? Simple mistake? The FO released the protest to the press less than 3 hours after handing it to the Russian embassy and without telling MacDonald.

The IRS makes tax payments open to public inspection, though local offices are obstructing release of the information to a greater or lesser degree. The Justice Dept confuses the situation further by asserting that publication of such information by newspapers is a crime. Nevertheless, the NYT publishes the tax paid by rich New Yorkers (plus Chicagohoovians, Angelinos, etc), noting that city and state government officials’ income is exempt from federal taxes, so their names won’t appear. Every businessman, banker etc is checking the lists already published to see if their name and tax payments have been released. Coolidge paid $6,643, John W. Davis over $84,000.

Corneliu Codreanu, head of Romania’s fascist Iron Guard, assassinates Constantin Manciu, the Jassy police chief. The story doesn’t seem to make it into the NYT, whose sole story from Romania in this period informs us that the country is adopting the metric system (spoiler alert). Codreanu will be acquitted after arguing that he shot Manciu – in the back – in self defense.

Northern Ireland arrests Éamon de Valera for... coming to Northern Ireland. In violation of an exclusion order. Specifically to Newry, where he came to speak to “my constituents” (he was elected to the UK Parliament in County Down in 1921 but didn’t take his seat) in favor of a Republican candidate.

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Today -100: October 24, 1924: Wherein is revealed what American standard of living cannot be maintained without

Pres. Coolidge gives an address “coast to coast” carried by 23 radio stations. He strongly opposes free trade: “American industry cannot exist, American wages cannot be paid, American standard of living cannot be maintained without a protective tariff.” He has nothing good to say about government spending, arguing that it needs to be slashed and taxes cut, especially for the rich: he claims that more tax can be collected from the rich at a moderate tax rate than at a high one. “I will call an agricultural conference” is where I personally checked out of reading this soporific speech.

The NYT tut tuts the rowdyism at British election meetings.

Tory leader Stanley Baldwin calls on women voters to “give themselves heart and soul to a policy of encouraging mutual trade within the empire by means of imperial preference.”

Italy: Gen. Emilio De Bono resigns as head of the Blackshirt militia. He has been accused, rightly, of using his day job as chief of police to cover up the Giacomo Matteotti assassination. Mussolini accepts what he calls De Bono’s “spontaneous” resignation and says he’ll appoint him governor of Somaliland (he won’t, but after De Bono is acquitted in a trial for the Matteotti thing, he’ll be made governor of Libya, which will not go well for Libyans).

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Today -100: October 23, 1924: Of generals and bungholes

Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who was acquitted earlier this year for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch, will run for the Reichstag, I assume representing Bavaria. Some of his admirers wanted him not to run because he belongs to the nation, not to any party (in this case a coalition party of far-right nationalists including Nazis who can’t run under the Nazi name) (which I’d like to point again isn’t a name the Nazis used).

Headline of the Day -100:  

I absolutely do not want to know what this means.

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Today -100: October 22, 1924: Hurrah, German elections are always a good time

Germany’s Reichstag elections will be held on December 7th. Prussia and Bavaria will tag along with their own state elections, which they didn’t have to do but figured what the hell. Other states may follow, and there may be municipal and county elections in various locales.

The Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) issues its election program, calling for the purging of pacifism and the November (1918) spirit, the restoration of the monarchy and repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Dawes Plan.

Germany confiscates a French balloon competing in a race which landed in Germany. This after the ZR-3 zeppelin was permitted to fly over France on the way to the US, so this seizure, while allowed under the regs, looks a bit rude.

The Italian Communists suggest that all opposition deputies, who are still boycotting Parliament over the Matteotti assassination, form a rump anti-Fascist parliament. There is no chance in hell other parties will join them.

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Today -100: October 21, 1924: Of headless chickens

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx having failed to bring Socialists and Nationalists into the government, the Reichstag will be dissolved and new elections held.

In the 3 years since the Volstead Act was passed, there have been 177,000 arrests just at the federal level, with prison sentences adding up to 7,000 years.

W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP calls on blacks to vote for Robert La Follette and drop the Republicans.

Bobby Franks’s father Jacob establishes a trust fund to continue the fight against any effort to release Leopold n’ Loeb from prison, even after his own death (which will be in 1928).

Éamon de Valera has said he’ll go to Northern Ireland to campaign for republican candidates in the UK general election. NI says he’ll be arrested if he tries it.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Henry MacCracken, president of Vassar.

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Today -100: October 20, 1924: Of slush, truancy, and matadors

In the absence of proper opinion polls, John W. Davis, like the Republicans, over-estimates the popularity of the Progressives, saying they’ll carry 6 to 8 states. He sees this as a revolt within the Republican Party, which will take votes only from it and result in Coolidge’s defeat.

The Republican slush fund is being used in Tennessee to pay the poll taxes of 25,000 or so Republican voters.

The Chicago superintendent of compulsory education says husbands of wives 16 years old or younger are legally responsible for their child-brides going to school and can be arrested for their truancy.

The “authorities” in Spain, whoever they might be, turn down a Señora Reverte who wants to be a matador. They say it’s dangerous and not fitting for a woman, although women can be picadors and banderillos (sic). (Update: This is María Salomé Rodríguez Tripiana, who fought as La Reverte and was actually born male, or so they claimed after the interior minister banned female matadors in 1908 as “an inappropriate spectacle and so contrary to culture and all delicate feelings” – you know, the delicate feelings of people who enjoy watching bulls stabbed.)

Trans matadors is not something I expected to be googling today.

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Today -100: October 19, 1924: Of electric coffee, assassins, and oases

Nominations close for the British general elections. 38 win their seats unopposed, including Tory leader Stanley Baldwin. The Liberals are contesting only 55% of the seats. 41 of the 1,405 candidates are women, of whom 12 are Tory, 6 Liberal and 22 Labour (Spoiler Alert: 4 will be elected).

NY Gov. Al Smith campaigns in Buffalo, where Mayor Francis Schwab (R), who was originally nominated by his friends as a practical joke – a brewer, he was under indictment at the time for possession of liquor – has been trying to make the names of Klan members public, fighting his police commissioner to do so. So the Klan is a big source of controversy in Buffalo, and Smith is here to help. He denounces Coolidge’s policy of silence.

The Klan holds a meeting in the fairgrounds outside Worcester, Massachusetts. As they leave, townies throw stones at their cars and beat up some of the kluxers.

Thomas Edison visits an electrical show, drinks “an electrically made cup of coffee,” and predicts that power will some day be transmitted by radio.

Heinrich Schulz (misidentified here as Foerster), one of the right-wing assassins of German former finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1921, was captured in Hungary early this year. Hungary then refused to extradite him to Germany but expels him from the country as an undesirable. He will join the Turkish army, he says. He won’t actually do that, but will go to Spanish Guinea to oversee a plantation, where he’ll get malaria. He’ll return to Germany after Hitler comes to power and join the SS. Captured at the end of the war and questioned at Nuremberg, he’ll be returned to Germany for trial for the assassination. He’ll be convicted for manslaughter and serve 2 years of a 12-year sentence, living as a free man until his death in 1979.

Two Italian planes bomb the Gialo oasis in Libya. This is seen, by the Italians anyway, as a particularly audacious mission, given that the planes had to fly 373 miles to and from Benghazi and a while ago a pilot fell out of his plane in Libya and was eaten by hyenas, as was the custom.

The Texas Supreme Court rules that women, in this case Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, are eligible to hold office.

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Today -100: October 18, 1924: Of monolinguals and table manners

Former ambassador John W. Davis admits at a meeting of Poles in Chicago that he only speaks English.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 17, 1924: The woman idea is here to stay

“Ma” Ferguson, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, says of the nomination of Nellie Taylor Ross for governor of Wyoming in the special election there, “The woman idea is here to stay.”

Matilde Pérez Molla becomes Spain’s first woman mayor, of Cuatretondeta. She is appointed, not elected. The first elected mayor, in 1932, will be María Domínguez Remón in Gallur, who will be killed by Francoists early in the Civil War. They weren’t big on the woman idea.

The ZR-3 zeppelin is supposed to be deflated and the hydrogen with which it crossed the Atlantic replaced with helium, which is a lot safer, but the US doesn’t have enough helium to inflate both the ZR-3 and the Shenandoah, so they may not do that.

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Today -100: October 16, 1924: There is no good in shutting your eyes to the portent of the Third Party movement

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes continues to campaign for Coolidge (and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) by focusing solely on Progressive candidate La Follette while ignoring Democratic candidate Davis. “The Third Party is a dangerous enemy to our form of government,” he says. He says Fightin’ Bob’s plan to give Congress a veto over Supreme Court decisions could lead to “any sort of dictatorship they please.”

Indiana Secretary of State Edward Jackson (R), who is running for governor, has been circulating photographs of Ku Klux Klan records to prove he is a member. As are almost all Republicans running for office in the state. Unclear why Jackson thought people needed reassurance on his klannishness.

The ZR-3 zeppelin completes its 5,000-mile trip from the factory in Germany that built it as part of war reparations to the US in 81 hours, circling New York City 5 times just above the skyscrapers and sailing high over Brooklyn (don’t we all) before landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In Toronto, Prince Edward falls off his horse, as was the custom.

The Wahabis capture Mecca. No “excesses” have been reported.

Headline of the Day -100:  

New York Giants pitcher Walter Huntzinger, not a large vomiting man, although I suppose he could be both.

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Today -100: October 15, 1924: Of salient personages and widows

Sen. Frank B. Brandegee (R-Connecticut), 60, commits suicide by gas inhalation. He was ill and had made some bad real estate speculations. He leaves a note for the servants, along with $200 to divide among 3 of them, warning “beware of the gas.” The NYT says Brandegee “was no mediocrity, but a salient personage.” “‘Reactionaries’ have their value. Especially are they needed now when ‘progressives’ is the only word.”

At an emergency state convention Wyoming Democrats nominate the late governor William Ross’s widow Nellie to replace him.

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