Today -100: January 10, 1925: Somehow they inveigled my son into accepting the money

The Kansas City Journal reports that Gov. Jonathan Davis’s son Russell (whose age I can NOT discover) took a $1,250 bribe in exchange for his father pardoning Fred Pollman, a former bank president convicted of forgery in 1920, who is out of jail but still on parole. The money was passed in a room at the National Hotel in Topeka while various reporters, a shorthand reporter, a state rep., prison and, for some reason, prohibition officials, were in another room listening in on a telephonic bug, all of whom confronted Russell when he returned. Russell says his father knew nothing about the bribe.  Pollman, who set Russell up, also accuses the governor of personally soliciting a bribe in another case, a man convicted of murder in 1911. Gov. Davis says it was all a frame-up; “Somehow they inveigled my son into accepting the money,” but when he realized what was going on he went back to the hotel to return the money and hand Pollman the pardon, which the governor had, coincidentally, already decided to grant (or, just possibly, to receive the rest of the bribe, which was a “$1,000 now, $250 on delivery” deal). This is nonsense: if Little Russell had intended to give back the money he would have actually had it on him, which he did not. 

Davis lost his re-election bid, so he’ll be out of office in a few days.

Coolidge nominates Charles Beecher Warren, former ambassador to Japan and Mexico, to be attorney general. There are rumors that Oliver Wendell Holmes will also retire soon. He is, after all, 83. In fact, Holmes will retire at 90 in 1932.

Mussolini’s draft election-reform law includes plural voting, with extra votes for teachers, clergy, secondary-school graduates, retired army & navy officers and Fascist militiamen, journalists, people who pay 100 lire in taxes, fathers of 5 sons, members of the royal family, etc etc. The complicated changes probably mean a new election can’t be organized for many months.

Dr. John Galen Locke, Grand Dragon of the Colorado Ku Klux Klan, is arrested on a charge of kidnapping 15-year-old high school student Keith Boehm and forcing him into a marriage, threatening him with mutilation if he didn’t. Warrants are issued for the actual kidnappers. Locke’s $1,000 bond is paid by Governor-Elect Clarence Morley, who always denied being a Klan member but is totally a Klan member.

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Today -100: January 9, 1925: The constitutional mask of normalization has fallen

The California Legislature ratifies the Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Congress to regulate child labor, the second state to ratify after Arizona.

The “Aventine” opposition deputies decide to continue boycotting the Italian Parliament. They issue a manifesto accusing Mussolini of being, you know, Mussolini, of suppressing personal liberty, crushing the free press, trampling on the law, tolerating violence by his followers, and the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. “The constitutional mask of normalization has fallen.” They will boycott the election if the government dissolves the Chamber without resigning first.

The former German and Bavarian royal families reconcile, with Wilhelm giving permission for Bavarian ex-prince Rupprecht to run as a monarchist, but for “Reich Governor,” which is not a thing, rather than president.

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Today -100: January 8, 1925: Of parks, “elections,” binghams, and ciggies

Robert Moses, president of the Long Island State Park Commission, complains about rich people obstructing his plans for a park on the South Shore in order to protect their exclusive golf club. As Moses was negotiating to purchase the old Taylor estate from its heirs, the richie-rich golfers swooped in and made a better offer; Moses appropriated the property, as was his custom, and now it’s being fought out in court.

Mussolini is planning another general election, but only after the Matteotti murder trial, which will of course totally absolve The Duck of any responsibility. Some of the opposition papers are coming out again, but leaving out any actual news.

Hiram Bingham III is sworn in as governor of Connecticut, and despite planning to resign after less than 24 hours to take up his seat in the US Senate, has the nerve to have a parade, and an inaugural ball, and an inaugural address, which is a long one, opposing turning the Ag College into a university, calling for reduced taxes, acquiring land for a seaside sanatorium, banning highway billboards, etc. He has a lot of opinions.

Incoming North Dakota Gov. Arthur Sorlie calls for the repeal of the anti-cigarette law.

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Today -100: January 7, 1925: Of postal pay, plane sizess, and political prisoners

The Senate sustains by one vote Coolidge’s veto of a bill raising the pay of postal workers.

Germany tells Allied ambassadors that their decision not to end the occupation of Cologne on schedule violates the Treaty of Versailles. It also says that unless they remove the restrictions on German commercial planes, whose size and power is limited in order to prevent them potentially being turned into military planes, then Germany will put the same restrictions on French planes overflying Germany, and shoot down any that violate those restrictions.

Repression continues in Italy: the government says it has closed 95 clubs, 25 subversive organizations, and 150 cafés, and arrested 111 revolutionaries. 

Germany also has political (Communist) prisoners. Albert Einstein comes out for amnesty.

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Today -100: January 6, 1925: Of explosions of Fascist joy, justices, and resumed administrations

Mussolini purges the last non-Fascist members from his Cabinet, the Liberals Gino Sarrocchi (Minister of Works) and Alessandro Casati (Education). The Liberal Party is now split, with some MPs following former PM Antonio Salandra into opposition, some saying they’ll continue voting with the Fascist government. 

The obnoxious NYT Italian correspondent says Saturday’s “explosion of Fascist joy” – surely the worst kind of joy – has died down.

80-year-old Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna retires after 27 years on the bench. When McKinley appointed him, he had no legal experience, much less judicial, so in the 5 weeks between his nomination and his confirmation he took a crash course at Columbia Law School. Coolidge nominates Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone to replace him. Stone went to Columbia for realsies.

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Taylor Ross tells the state Senate that hers is not a new administration but the resumption of her late husband’s.

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Today -100: January 5, 1925: Of women governors, fucking Fascists, and flesh color

Mrs. Nellie Taylor Ross takes office. The first woman governor in the US. In Wyoming, the first state to give women the vote 35 years before, and the first territory 20 years before that.

Mussolini orders prefects to break up opposition political associations and to close meeting places. Fascists hold parades in many cities joyfully celebrating The Duck’s return to thuggery. Fascist crowds gather outside opposition newspapers to express their displeasure (what’s wrong with a letter-to-the-editor? on some nice stationery?), but police are preventing violence, for now. Officials are confiscating opposition papers regardless of content – including the Milan Giustizia, which appears blank except for ads. 

Palm Beach’s Casino Beach, which presumably already bans the display of women’s legs, adds a ban on white or “flesh”-colored stockings. Also, one-piece bathing suits. The beach censor, which is a real position that someone occupies, is armed with a color chart to determine just what constitutes flesh color.

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Today -100: January 4, 1925: Chivalrous?

Republicans in the New York Legislature are considering abolishing the Motion Picture Censorship Commission, not from any sudden opposition to censorship, but because a Republican member’s term just expired and when Gov. Al Smith replaces them it would have a Democratic majority.

Mussolini says he will “clear up the political situation” within 48 hours so that “the air will again be breathable in Italy.” Well that isn’t ominous-sounding. He says only force can decide between Fascism and the opposition, of whom he says, “We have swallowed their insults and allowed them to call us brigands and assassins. Now before the Chamber, before the whole nation and before God, I alone assume full personal, political, moral and historical responsibility for everything that has occurred in Italy. If Fascism is an association of malefactors [Fact Check: It is] then let it be known that I am head of this association of malefactors.” He denies having created the Italian equivalent of the Cheka [Fact Cheka: He has]: “If I had founded such an organization I would have seen to it that its violence was always intelligent, timely and chivalrous, while the violences attributed to the Cheka which I am accused of founding always have been unintelligent, untimely and stupid.” He says “Please spare me the insult of believing me so stupid as to have ordered” the assassination of Matteotti. The moment has come, he says, to “pass to the counter-offensive.” It’s unclear what this means or what he will do in the next 48 hours. He’s already cracking down on opposition newspapers, which he blames for anti-Fascist violence, and it’s assumed he’ll make some move against the “Aventine” MPs boycotting Parliament, maybe declare a state of siege? Il Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s newspaper, says “Oppositions are a thing of the past.”

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx has failed, again, to form a new cabinet containing the center and right-wing parties, will now try to form a non-partisan cabinet which would just kind of hope for the best in getting majority Reichstag support for its various policies.

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Today -100: January 3, 1925: We must correct our blunder here

France asks the US for a ten-year moratorium on paying its war debt and then 80 years to pay it off.

French oncologist Jean Alban Bergonié dies. He experimented with radiation as a treatment for cancer, irradiating rat testicles (that wasn’t science, that was just for fun, probably) and gave himself cancer. All sorts of cancer. One hand had to be amputated, then the arm, then 3 fingers on the other hand. He dies of lung cancer.

Mikhail Kalinin, chair of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, signs a decree telling the USSR’s constituent republics to re-do elections at the local level that “gave undesirable results.” “We must correct our blunder here.”

Those 15 Republican state senators who fled Rhode Island in June will end their exile as the General Assembly term expires. They were successful in their goal of preventing the Legislature accomplishing anything, including paying state employees.

The Italian government seizes a bunch of newspapers that printed that a Fascist army was marching on Rome, like that could ever happen. There are violent incidents in various cities, about which the NYT is somewhat vague, not that I’d believe its correspondent after they referred to anti-Fascists as “subversives.”

Bartolomeo Vanzetti of Sacco & Vanzetti fame is sent to an insane asylum.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 2, 1925: Of rhinos

The Duke of York (grandfather of King Charles) shoots a charging rhinoceros.

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Today -100: January 1, 1925: Party like it’s 1624

Italian police seize issues of at least 11 newspapers and raid the houses of opposition leaders. The government is claiming it’s searching for secret arms caches and for money sent from France to overthrow the Fascist regime.

Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone says the Justice Dept concluded 80,000 cases in 1924, 46,000 of which were Prohibition cases.

The Tuskegee Institute says there were only 16 lynchings in the US in 1924. 5 in Florida, 2 in Georgia, 1 each in Illinois, Kentucy, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. All 16 lynchees were black.

The capital of Norway, Christiania, is renamed Oslo, which was the name used until 1624.

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Today -100: December 31, 1924: Of total bankruptcies and debt

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann says “If the Entente persists in the policy indicated by the refusal to evacuate the Cologne zone on Jan. 10 it will mean the total bankruptcy of the Dawes plan.” He asserts that Germany is now fully disarmed: “All statements to the contrary are fairy tales.” They have some weird-ass fairy tales in Germany.

Congresscritters think France means to repudiate its war debt to the US. The Senate is thinking of advising banks not to make any more loans to France until it makes arrangements to pay up.

Turkey will confiscate the property of Greeks, whether citizens of Greece or of Turkey itself, in retaliation for alleged mistreatment of Muslims in Thrace and something or other about Muslim property in Greece.

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Today -100: December 30, 1924: When jury duty is jury pleasure

A San Juan, Puerto Rico prohibition case ends in a mistrial after the quart bottle of evidence mysteriously disappears. And by mysteriously disappears, I mean the jury... evaluated... whether it met the 0.5% alcohol threshold, until it was all gone.

Mussolini is again implicated in Fascist violence, including the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, by the leak of a memo from one of his top lieutenants, Cesare Rossi.

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Today -100: December 29, 1924: Of eclairs

Prime Minister Édouard Herriot brings espionage law charges against the newspaper Eclair for publishing a report from Gen. Marie Nollet from a few months ago complaining about Germany’s secret rearming. A day earlier Eclair (why am I getting hungry?) printed the minutes of a June meeting between Herriot & Ramsay MacDonald in which the former did not look good. All of the French press is pissed at Herriot for acting against a newspaper.

We know there are just 2 living survivors from the audience in Ford’s Theatre on the night Lincoln was assassinated, but what about the cast? Actor Jennie Ross, who had a small role, dies at 91 in her home from a gas leak or something. Born Jennie Anderson, she later married Civil War general W.E.W. Ross.

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Today -100: December 28, 1924: Of morally disarming, contracts, and horses

Britain, France, Japan, Italy and Belgium agree not to end the occupation of Cologne because Germany has been a very naughty boy and tried to secretly manufacture rifles and machine guns. The London Sunday Times and the Observer accuse Germany of failing to “morally disarm.”

Texas Governor-Elect Miriam Ferguson petitions the district court to remove the legal disability on her as a married woman to make contracts so she can sign contracts as governor without facing legal challenges.

From July, it will be illegal to drive a horse in downtown Los Angeles. Jaywalking will also be banned and pedestrians must raise an arm to indicate their intention to cross the road.

Austrian Socialists and the right-wing Catholic Christian Social Party both urge their followers to join the army, in a struggle for dominance of the army. The Socialists want to determine whether the army will resist monarchist or Communist putsches or put down strikes.

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Today -100: December 27, 1924: Look what Santa brought

Albania: The forces of Ahmet Zogu occupy Tirana on Christmas Day. Bishop-Prime Minister Fan Noli and his Cabinet flee into the night, carrying only the clothes on their back, probably, and all the government’s gold. Zogu enters the capital on horseback, as was the custom.

Fighting his annulment suit against his bride Alice, rich douche Leonard Kip Rhinelander opposes paying her alimony and lawyers’ fees pending the trial. The judge seems sympathetic to giving her some of that, not as much as she asked, after Rhinelander’s lawyer answers in the affirmative to the question “Are you going to attempt to prove the defendant has negro blood in her veins?” Such a genealogy search, tracing the roots of her West Indian grandfather (who her father evidently never knew) would be expensive, the judge observes. Tomorrow he’ll award her $300 a month and $3,000 for her lawyers.

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Today -100: December 26, 1924: A heart-warming Christmas story

A Spanish woman promised the Virgin of Carmel that if her soldier son came home safely from Morocco she’d take her own life. He does and she does.

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Today -100: December 25, 1924: We shall pursue our attacks on Almighty God in due time and in an appropriate manner

Grigori Zinoviev, chair of the Comintern, says maybe Communists have gone too far in fighting religion, so “We shall pursue our attacks on Almighty God in due time and in an appropriate manner.”

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Today -100: December 24, 1924: Of dirigibles, technical treason, and balls

Plans to have the large Navy dirigible Los Angeles fly over New York City and play Christmas carols have been called off. The Navy decided to give airship-operators the usual Xmas leave instead. (And no, there’s no explanation how the carols could have been played so as to be heard at ground level).

Erwin Rorthardt, the editor of the German monarchist Mitteldeutsche Presse, is convicted in a Magdeburg court of libel for claiming that Pres. Friedrich Ebert was guilty of treason for being part of the 1918 munitions strike (he evidently tried to bring it to an end) and is sentenced to 3 months, but the judge also says that Ebert is technically guilty of treason no matter his intention. Ebert had wanted to sue another editor earlier, but that case would have been tried in a court in hostile Bavaria so he didn’t.

Coolidge gives in and will allow inaugural balls, but he won’t go to any of them because he might have to dance and he can’t dance and won’t dance and you can’t make him.

Coolidge plans to keep the Cabinet he inherited from Harding, who was such a great judge of character, except for AgSec Gore, who wants to retire.

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Today -100: December 23, 1924: Spin doctors

Despite only having a caretaker government, Germany (Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann) asks the League of Nations about joining. It wants German participation in League military sanctions to be optional, since Germany is currently “completely disarmed.”

German Nationalists really want to be part of the next government, and are suggesting that the far-right-wing Reichswehr commander Gen. Hans von Seeckt use his... influence... to make sure of it.

Gandhi says he’ll only continue as president of the Indian National Congress if each member spins 2,000 yards of yarn a month.

F.W. Murnau’s film The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann), with Emil Jannings, premieres.

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Today -100: December 22, 1924: Of foreign invaders, balls, and endless diets of jazz

Albanian Bishop-Prime Minister Fan Noli accuses Yugoslavia of being behind the coup against him and indeed being “the foreign invader.”

To answer the question I asked, Hiram Bingham III, who will be governor of Connecticut for exactly one day before stepping down to become a US senator, will indeed hold an inaugural ball.

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover addresses the financial viability of radios. He understands that there needs to be some form of revenue to pay for programming: “The radio industry can't live on an endless diet of jazz.” He’s against licensing on the BBC model, so proposes a 2% or so tax on radio equipment (unclear if that means finished radios or radio parts – the first, commercial, BBC went bankrupt because it was financed by a tax on radios but hobbyists liked to build their own radio sets).

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Today -100: December 21, 1924: Tamed

Headline of the Day -100:  

Nailed it.

With increasing opposition in Parliament, and resignations of former supporters, Mussolini, in a surprise move, announces new elections for March or April. But first, he’s gonna change the electoral laws. Again.

Secretary of War John Weeks approves the use of federal lands in the construction of a bridge between San Francisco and Marin County. The Golden Gate Bridge will open in 1937.

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Today -100: December 20, 1924: I go to the decapitating block joyfully and happily

Pres. Coolidge appoints the secretaries of war, the navy, interior, and commerce to a new oil conservation board. He cites the need to make sure there’s oil available for airplanes for the next war, cuz it’s not like you can run them on coal.

German serial killer (or as the NYT calls him, “wholesale murderer,” the term serial killer not being coined until the ‘60s) Fritz Harmaan is convicted in a Hanover court of 24 of the 27 murders for which he was charged. He’s sentenced to death, as is his accomplice Hans Grans. Haarman says he accepts the verdict, despite being innocent of some of the murders. Before sentencing, Haarman asked not to be sent to an insane asylum: “I go to the decapitating block joyfully and happily.”

Headline of the Day -100: 

Speaking of fowl pests, Adolf Hitler is released from prison waaaay early. Disgracefully early. Five prisoners on the Bavarian left are also pardoned, just to pretend to balance things out. Only 2 of them are named in the article: Felix Fechenbach (murdered by Nazis in 1933) and Erich Mühsam (murdered by Nazis in 1934).

Spain will allow descendants of the Sephardi Jews expelled in 1492 to become citizens after two years’ residence.

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Today -100: December 19, 1924: Humanity should not think me worse than I am.

The British Columbia Legislature calls for Canada to have its own ban on Asian immigration, abrogating any treaties standing in its way. Says Minister of Mines William Sloan, “Orientals and whites will not mix.”

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, following Gustav Stresemann’s attempt to form a cabinet, also fails. Stresemann’s Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) refuses to join a cabinet which excludes the nationalist right wing, while the Zentrum party refuses to join one which includes them.

Albanian Prime Minister (and bishop) Fan Noli is overthrown by a coup led by followers of Ahmet Zogu, the future King Zog, who is still in exile, though not for long.

Roosevelt Grisby, a 20-year-old black man, is lynched in Charleston, Missouri. He supposedly attacked a white woman, and had been arrested. He is hanged, shot, dragged behind a car, and hanged again.

Serial killer Fritz Harmaan’s trial for 27 murders concludes in Hanover. A not hugely sympathetic judge stops him talking about his military record and love for his mother, asking if he was going to recount his whole life. “No, but humanity should not think me worse than I am.”

NYT Index Typo (?) of the Day:

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Today -100: December 18, 1924: We know we do not belong to a gang of murderers

German President Friedrich Ebert asks Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann to form a government. Stresemann quickly fails to do so, as the Catholic Zentrum party refuses to sit in a Cabinet with extreme Nationalists, who they think would sabotage the Dawes Plan. Which they totally would.

The Fascist vice president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Francesco Giunta, offers to resign to face criminal charges for ordering the beating of a Fascist dissident. I doubt Giunta seriously intended resigning, but that may just be me being cynical about fucking Fascists. Anyway, Fascist deputies vote to refuse to accept the resignation or, as they put it, to allow the “Fascist revolution to be put on trial.” Sez one deputy, “we know we do not belong to a gang of murderers.” Which seems like the sort of thing you only have to say out loud if you belong to a gang of murderers. One Fascist deputy resigns in protest and far-right former prime minister Antonio Salandra (1914-16) votes no and storms out, returning later. One deputy challenges another to a duel, as was the custom. (Spoiler Alert: In March, the Chamber will refuse to allow Milan magistrates to prosecute Giunta).

Moscow denies that there were any riots about Trotsky’s exile, and indeed denies that Trotsky has left Moscow, although possibly just because he’s too ill to be moved.

Phone connections are made between London and Berlin for the first time.

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Today -100: December 17, 1924: Of binghams and prohibition

Hiram Bingham III, a former Yale (and Harvard and Princeton) professor who was elected governor of Connecticut just last month, presumably on the basis of having the most Republican-governor-of-Connecticut name, is now elected to the US Senate in a special election to replace Frank Brandegee, who committed suicide. So he’s now both governor-elect & senator-elect as well as lieutenant governor. His senatorial term won’t start until after he’s inaugurated as governor and holds his... he won’t really hold a governor’s ball, will he? He’s threatening to hold off resigning until his appointments are confirmed. Beyond his record for shortest gubernatorial term ever, Bingham is an explorer, known for having “discovered” Machu Picchu.

Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone orders an inquiry into the supposed lax enforcement of Prohibition in New Jersey.

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Today -100: December 16, 1924: Of magnetic stations, airship hook-ups, kaiser-grinches, and lynchings

The Soviet Union has discovered a brass plate stuck to a rock in the Chukchi Peninsula in eastern Siberia proclaiming the existence of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Magnetic Station, the station presumably consisting of a rock and the magnetic recordings made by a US Coast Guard cutter. The mark threatens a $250 fine or imprisonment for removing the mark, despite it being in the, you know, Bering Strait. The Soviets, who did remove the mark, protest the “gross violation” of their sovereignty by the placement of this plate. Can’t wait to see if this escalates and am thankful they didn’t have nukes in 1924.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The 1,500-foot club.

Former kaiser Wilhelm will omit the dispensing of his customary Christmas charity this year, because he is so very poor.

A smallish mob invades the Nashville General Hospital and seizes and lynches a 15-year-old black youth who had been shot trying to hold up a grocer.

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Today -100: December 15, 1924: Of dead governors and love letters

Former New York governor Martin Glynn (1913-4) “dies suddenly” of a reported heart attack. There’s even a detailed story released about his chronic back pain acting up and he was walking around his room to relieve it but he collapsed and a doctor was called but it was too late. Actually, in reality, he shot himself in the head because of unbearable spinal pain. The first Catholic governor of NY, Glynn inherited the job after William Sulzer was impeached, leading to a couple of months in which both claimed to be governor, operating from different rooms in the executive office building, which I remember as the source of many uproarious posts here. He failed to be elected in his own right in 1914. Giving the keynote at the 1916 Democratic convention, he coined the term “He kept us out of war.”

Trotsky has supposedly been exiled to the Crimea (but he’s still minister of war?), and there are, supposedly, riots in Moscow between followers & opponents of Mr. Trotsky.

The dancer Isadora Duncan is broke and considering selling the 1,000 love letters she received in what the NYT calls “her prime.” She can’t sell her Paris houses because France won’t let her go to Paris, and her husband has gone to the Caucasus to become a bandit so he can use the experience to write poems, as one does.

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Today -100: December 14, 1924: God bless our American institutions

American Federation of Labor president for 38 years Samuel Gompers dies at 74. His last words: “God bless our American institutions. May they grow better day by day.” Many tributes pour in, none acknowledging that “Gompers” is an objectively silly name.

Objectively silly.

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Today -100: December 13, 1924: Of tsars

There’s some dissent in the surviving members of the Romanov dynasty over Grand Duke Cyril declaring himself true Tsar of All the Russias. The Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna is especially miffed because, hey, her son Tsar Nicholas and the other royals might still be alive. Cyril’s wife the Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna will be touring the US soon, which will be a big deal for Russian exiles and will be ignored by the US government.

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Today -100: December 12, 1924: Of cabinets and anti-Semites

Representatives of the British, French and Italian governments will meet German Prez Ebert and Chancellor Marx to warn against the sort of nationalist Cabinet Stresemann is trying to impose.

Anti-Semitic riots at the University of Jassy, Romania cause the authorities to close the U., as was the custom.

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Today -100: December 11, 1924: If the white people do not want to degenerate....

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx and his Cabinet will resign after he fails to put together a new post-election coalition. Marx wants to include more Socialists but Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann’s People’s Party wants a shift to the right, bringing in monarchist nationalist opponents of the Weimar Republic.

Japan is pissed that Britain plans to expand its naval base in Singapore. It doesn’t believe this is just about defending Australia.

Yotaro Sugimura, the Japanese delegate to the Opium Conference, pulls out, despairing at the deadlock. He says the greatest danger from opium is to the white races rather than the Orientals. The Japanese are the only Orientals not dominated by the West, because they don’t use opium. “If the white people do not want to degenerate, they must suppress drugs.”

There’s so much competition in the hangman trade now, at least in Manitoba, that the fee has been reduced from $250 to $100. Free market, baby!

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Today -100: December 10, 1924: To arms

The US accepts the League of Nations’s invitation to join in its conference on controlling the arms trade in May.

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Today -100: December 9, 1924: Of explosions and corsets

The building of the Coffeyville Kansas Ku Klux Klan newspaper The Daily Dawn is blowed up real good. It miiiiiiight be a gas leak. The explosion happened “early today,” but was it at dawn?

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Bruce Bruce-Porter, which is exactly the sort of name you’d expect in a doctor with strong opinions about rubber corsets.

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Today -100: December 8, 1924: Of German elections and negligible cranks

In the German Reichstag elections, the center parties do all right and the two extremes quite badly. Don’t get used to it. The moderate bourgeois DDP, DVP, Zentrum and BVP gain a few seats, but the Social Democrats (SPD) increase their vote from 20.5% to 26%. The Communist (KPD) vote drops from 12.9% to 9% and the coalition of Nazi & anti-Semitic Völkisch parties drop from 6.5 to 3%. The results could also be read as a strong victory for the Dawes Plan.

Izvestia asks George Bernard Shaw for his opinions on Russia. They may have asked the wrong dude. In his response, which he also sent to the Daily Herald, almost as if he thinks Izvestia might not print it, he suggests abolishing the Communist International since “the proposition that the world should take its orders from a handful of Russian novices who seem to have gained their knowledge of modern socialism by sitting over a drawing room stove and reading of the pamphlets of liberal revolutionists of 1848-70 makes even Lord Curzon and Mr. Winston Churchill seem extreme modernists in comparison.” Ouch. Until Socialism is treated as a living force “there will be nothing but misunderstandings in which the dozen most negligible cranks in Russia will correspond solemnly with the dozen most negligible cranks in England, both of them convinced that they are the proletariat and the revolution and the future and the International and God knows what else.”

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Today -100: December 7, 1924: We will not let them meddle in our political life

The French police arrest 300 Communists, 70 of them foreigners who will be deported. Sounds like a lot of those are refugees from fascist Spain and fascist Italy; none are Russian. Prime Minister Édouard Herriot tells the Chamber of Deputies that the government “will defend the democratic republic against both the Clerical peril and the Communist peril which are threatening it in opposite directions but with the same methods of agitation.” He says of the foreign Communists: “They are indulging in political demonstrations, and we will not tolerate it, we will not let them meddle in our political life.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: December 6, 1924: My past actions speak for themselves

The Italian Senate votes confidence in Mussolini 206-54, with 35 abstaining, a weaker showing than a few months ago. He refuses to make any pledges: “My past actions speak for themselves and clearly indicate the line I propose to follow.” He claims to have suppressed all illegalities, reined in his party’s excesses, restored Parliament, and he says he doesn’t need to do anything about the militia (Blackshirts) because there’s like eight of them.

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Today -100: December 5, 1924: Of plots

Lord Allenby, High Commissioner of Egypt, warns the British Cabinet that Egyptian nationalists have a plot to assassinate them. They’re getting armed cops for protection.

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Today -100: December 4, 1924: Of states of unions, non-Mongolians, and greed

It’s State of the Union time (still not called that, not for another decade). Coolidge doesn’t deliver it in person this time. He says “every American should be satisfied with the present state of the Union.” He wants Congress to pass the tax cut they failed to pass in June. Why, he says, if taxes on the wealthy were “scientifically revised downward,” they might actually yield more revenue while stimulating investment. He has nothing much other than that, just joining the World Court and a lot of vague aspirations not attached to any proposed legislation.

Russia reduces the size of its military to 562,000.

After a minister refused to perform her marriage because it is illegal in Montana for Chinese people to marry white people, Evelyn Kendall Moy says, or her foster parents the Moys say, she’s actually white, born to Canadians.

René Clair’s short film “Entr’acte” premieres, as does Erich von Stroheim’s extremely not-short film “Greed”.

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Today -100: December 3, 1924: Of immigration, tax returns, and Communist coups

Brazil will follow the US in banning Japanese immigration (in a few days it will change this to banning all immigration, just to show they weren’t being racist).

The federal court in Kansas City rules that newspapers may print tax return figures.

One day after the attempted Communist uprising in Estonia, 20 or 30 (depending on whether the sloppy NYT’s headline or its article is accurate) (tomorrow’s paper says 7) are tried by court-martial and executed.

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Today -100: December 2, 1924: Of coups, chambers, and good accounts

Estonia quickly crushes an attempted Communist coup, which was ordered by the Soviet Union. The coup is partly a response to last month’s trial of 149 Communists, which, however, removed many of the people who might have done a better job organizing a coup (one, Jaan Tomp, was executed).

Frenchwomen are made eligible to their first public body: the Chambers of Commerce.

“Lady, Be Good!,” a musical comedy by George & Ira Gershwin, their first Broadway show, is playing at the Liberty. The NYT review praises Adele Astaire’s performance, adding that her brother “Fred Astaire, too, gives a good account of himself”.

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Today -100: December 1, 1924: First the dance hall, then the gambling hell, then the vice resort...

The Egyptian government accepts the rest of Britain’s demands, including preserving the powers of British financial and judicial “advisers.”

German Minister of the Interior Karl Jarres bans wireless broadcasts of election speeches, leaving the radio “reserved for higher things in life and unsullied by political strife.”

Chicago Mayor William E. Dever complains about newspaper criticism of his focus on suppressing gambling, booze running, and other vice, going full after-school special: “In them the criminal gets his schooling. First the dance hall, then the gambling hell, then the vice resort, and by that time there is a desire for money, and the only way to get it is to take a gun and go out and hold up a respectable citizen.” He also complains about the positive coverage of the late florist-mobster Dion O'Banion.

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Today -100: November 30, 1924: Of bedtime stories, leper churches, ponzis, and Puccini

The mutinying Sudanese soldiers surrender.

Federal prohibition agents in Seattle are prevented by a court order from destroying a radio station broadcasting bedtime stories they claim were coded messages to bootleggers in Canada and Japan.

The only Protestant church for lepers in the US opens in Carville, Louisiana at the leper colony there (James Carville’s ancestors were in the leper biz).

Charles Ponzi is arrested by Immigration, who intend to deport him because when he first entered the US from Canada he failed to mention his conviction there for forgery. The question now is whether Canada would accept his being deported there or whether it’ll have to be Italy. It will actually take another decade for him to be deported. (Mea culpa: there was a mistrial in Massachusetts sometime after he was released from federal prison in August which I missed).

Composer Giacomo Puccini (La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and the uncompleted Turandot) dies at 65 of throat cancer.

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Today -100: November 29, 1924: Of mutinies and mandates, legal whites and princes

A couple companies of the Sudanese army mutiny and attack the military hospital in Khartoum, killing a British doctor and 2 Syrian orderlies. This has something to do with Britain forcing out their Egyptian officers. What that has to do with a hospital is unclear. Sudanese are being killed and the hospital is under siege. Meanwhile, British soldiers have been marching around Cairo, pissing on stuff to mark their territory, probably.

Former PM Ramsay MacDonald suggests asking the League of Nations to give Britain a mandate over the Sudan.

Alice Rhinelander will fight husband Leonard’s annulment suit by denying having any negro blood and asserting that she is legally – yes, “legally” – white since her mother is white. Her lawyer says her father didn’t notice that a clerk had designated him negro on his naturalization application form, which he – according to the lawyer – isn’t.

The princes of the various German states (Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, etc) supposedly have made a secret agreement to overthrow the Weimar Republic and resume their thrones, burying their past differences.

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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?

Headline of the Day -100: 

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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).

Headline of the Day -100: 

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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.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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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