Today -100: February 12, 1925: Stand back there, you coyotes

A performance of Barry Conners’ farce “Hell’s Bells” at Wallack’s Theatre on Broadway is interrupted when Eddie Garvie, finding he’d left his stage gun in his dressing room, picks up another gun, which he discovers to be filled with real bullets when he shoots Clifton Self in the arm (nearly taking out Shirley Booth) while shouting his line “Stand back there, you coyotes!” The police arrest Garvie (for having an unlicensed gun, actually the property of the stage carpenter, not for shooting a dude; he’ll be acquitted) but allow him to finish the play, which resumes after 20 minutes (Self wasn’t due to appear after that point anyway). Humphrey Bogart is in this production, but is not mentioned in the article. The play’s run will conclude in May.

The Irish Free State Dáil Éireann bans itself from considering any future bills legalizing divorce.

Greece appeals to the League of Nations against Turkey’s expulsion of the Greek Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Constantinos from Constantinople. Turkey says the expulsion does not violate the Lausanne Treaty and is purely a domestic matter.

I see in the entertainment ads that there’s a movie version of the play “Charley’s Aunt” starring Syd Chaplin, Charlie’s brother, which I’d never heard of, much less seen. Evidently it’s “The World’s Funniest Motion Picture.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: February 11, 1925: Typhoid oysters are the worst kind of oysters

Coolidge reduces the cost of his inauguration of just a few thousand dollars, so a lot of donations are gonna have to be returned. There probably won’t even be fireworks.

The feds think they’ve tracked “typhoid oysters” to a company on Long Island. The oysters were kept in polluted waters. The feds think oysters are safe now, if people feel like a gamble. Something like 150 people died, which is still the most lethal outbreak of food-borne illness in the US.

Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson shows up in Parliament wearing a “startling” green dress, which is evidently a big deal. At some point this week she will rise to speak without wearing a hat, and that’ll be a big deal too.

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Today -100: February 10, 1925: Of internationals, non-uprisings, and wheelers

The Italian Fascists consider establishing a Fascist International.

Stalin gives what is supposedly his first-ever press interview. He pooh-poohs the idea that Germany is ripe for a Communist uprising. That would require the German workers shifting from socialism to Communism, some sort of economic crisis, and something going wrong in the nations (France) opposed (France) to Germany to prevent them intervening.

NY politician Everett P. Wheeler dies at 84. He once ran for governor, but is best-known for his long opposition to women’s suffrage and his frequent letters to the editor. Here he is deploring the 1912 NYC suffrage parade: 

And so 20,000 women paraded down Fifth Avenue to the sound of the trumpet and in the glare of the electric lights.  Did their leaders really think that any sensible man likes to have his wife, or his mother, or his daughter thus parade the streets?  It seems to me that this parade is one of the strongest arguments against universal suffrage for women that has yet been presented.  It shows such a failure to adopt means reasonable to a desired end that it destroys the confidence any of us may have had in the good sense and sound judgment of the leaders of this movement.

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Today -100: February 9, 1925: Of debts

Britain offers to forgive 2/3 of France’s wartime debt to it.

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Today -100: February 8, 1925: Dino Fight! Dino Fight!

Nepal’s Maharajah Tribhubana Bir Bikram issues a decree to abolish slavery and free the country’s 51,000 slaves. Wait, actually he made this speech more than two months ago, but news of it has only just now reached India and from there the rest of the world.

Rep. Mary Norton (D-NJ) tells a meeting of the National Democratic Club that her husband isn’t thrilled about her being in Washington. Elizabeth Marbury introduced her thus: “She is not hard, dried-up and vindictive, but possesses that rarest combination, the heart of a woman and the brains of a man.” Oy.

The Williamson County, Illinois Board of Supervisors votes for a “peace plan” for Herrin’s Klan-anti-Klan war, including the literal exile of Sheriff George Galligan and the revocation of the gun permits that have been handed out profligately. The kluxers aren’t happy about losing their guns.

The Lost World, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel, premieres in New York. It’s the first dinosaur movie. Wallace Beery is rather more beardy than I pictured Prof. Challenger when I read the book, and it’s impossible to watch him silently bellowing without imagining the voice of Brian Blessed. The special effects are... what they are.

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Today -100: February 7, 1925: Of opium, radium, jixes, and coal

The US delegates quit the Opium Conference after opium-producing countries refuse to agree to the US’s plans to limit production, saying it’s more of a demand-side problem.

Headline of the Day -100:

British Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) tells a Jewish deputation objecting to the registration of long-time immigrants, delays in naturalization, and deportations based on petty shit, that Britain has the right to exclude any aliens it wants, just like the US does with its racist anti-Asian laws. He hastens to add that he is “not in any sense an anti-Semite.” Indeed he is an anti-Semite in every sense (see David Cesarani, “The Anti-Jewish Career of Sir William Joynson-Hicks,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 24, No. 3, 1989).

For a few days, the NYT has been making fun of the Reformed Seventh Day Adventists, a small church on Long Island, whose prophetess predicted the world would end yesterday -100. It did not. The organizer of the group, Catherine Kennedy, even laid in a ton of coal. “She did not say to what use the ton of coal would be put if the prophecy was fulfilled.”

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Today -100: February 6, 1925: Where he will doubtless gather moss

Harlan Fiske Stone is confirmed as Supreme Court justice 71-6.

France recently amnestied some WW I army deserters, so Paul Grappe comes forward to claim his amnesty. He deserted in November 1914 and has been living as a woman since then. He says he’s tired of wearing women’s clothes.

The USSR will purge the military of active Trotskyites but soldiers who are just Trotsky sympathizers will merely be transferred.

As the 69th Congress winds down, a bunch of bills die from lack of time, including the measure to join the World Court. And some farm stuff.

Outgoing Congresscritter J. Scott Wolff (D-Missouri) is arrested for verbally abusing a black bellboy, claiming he gave the wrong change. Wolff is a dentist and a lawyer.

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Today -100: February 5, 1925: The Malice of Mortimer

The Senate will consider the Supreme Court nomination of Harlan Fiske Stone in open session.

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau Charles Forbes and contractor John Thompson are sentenced to 2 years in prison and fined $10,000. Forbes and Thompson claim to be the victim of the “malice of Mortimer,” the informer Elias Mortimer, who was a middleman in the bribe deal and claims Forbes slept with his wife.

VP Charles Dawes finally explains why he refused Coolidge’s offer to sit in on Cabinet meetings: the president should only have people there who he trusts, so establishing a precedent that veeps sit in the Cabinet might prove embarrassing for a future president who doesn’t trust his veep.

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Today -100: February 4, 1925: Undesirable

Headline of the Day -100:

A bill before the Indian Legislative Assembly would treat as inferior races all countries that treat Indians as an inferior race. Meaning the United States, of course. And Japan, working on legalizing land ownership by foreigners, is considering whether it’s practical to exclude from that right people from US states that ban Japanese people owning land.

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Today -100: February 3, 1925: Of serums and amnesties

Well, the dog-sleds with the diphtheria antitoxic finally reach Nome, but it’s frozen solid.

Prussian Minister-President (prime minister) Otto Braun resigns again, after failing to construct a coalition or at least get neutrality from the People’s Party.

The USSR amnesties those who fought on the other side in the Civil War. In the Northern Caucasus anyway. The government says they’ve all realized their mistake.

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Today -100: February 2, 1925: The glory that was Hapsburg is gone

Headline of the Day -100:  

The second Edwin James front-page article in two days shitting on Austria.

A blizzard prevents the dog-sleds carrying diphtheria antitoxic reaching Nome, Alaska.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. open their first store, in Chicago, 33 years after starting life as a mail-order company.

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Today -100: February 1, 1925: Of patriarchs and man’s faith in his superiority

Greece protests Turkey’s expulsion from Constantinople of the Greek Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Constantinos, saying it’s a treaty violation. Greece implicitly threatens war by not releasing the 1923 class of conscripts.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 31, 1925: Of fraud, renegades, and bananas

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, Charles Forbes, the biggest crook in the Harding Administration, is convicted, along with contractor John Thompson, of defrauding the government in contracts for vets’ hospitals.

Coolidge supports the Congressional Republican decision not to allow supporters of La Follette in the 1924 election back into the caucus. Fiorello La Guardia is particularly defiant.

Otto Braun (Social Democrat) is back as Minister-President (prime minister) of Prussia after the (Catholic) Zentrum Party fails to come to a coalition agreement with the right-wing and fascist parties.

Honduras will ban black immigrants. Banana companies have been using them to undercut wages. It doesn’t say where they’re importing them from.

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Today -100: January 30, 1925: But mostly the assassination thing

New York City Comptroller/Controller Charles L. Craig has been feuding with mayors for 8 years because he is an obnoxious petty little bitch (here’s his 1935 obituary). Anyway, at a Sinking Fund Commission meeting, he tries to have NY Mayor John Hylan arrested for disorderly conduct (i.e., calling him a liar). Hylan’s bodyguard declines Craig’s order to arrest him.

Before sending Trotsky to southern Russia for his, um, health, after firing him as war minister, Stalin has all his papers confiscated.

Albania keeps trying to get foreigners to come and be king. The latest to turn them down: Sir Charles Edward Archibald Watkin Hamilton (that’s just one person, I think) and Lord Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn Headley (probably 3 or 4 people). Headley, whose title is Irish, is the president of the British Moslem Society. He notes that the monarch position has no salary “and the almost certainty of assassination.” Also, they didn’t meet his financial terms.

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Today -100: January 29, 1925: Oh I think it made some difference

The president of the British Optical Association, W.R. Baker, warns against eyestrain from doing crossword puzzles.

Harlan Fiske Stone’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is held in open session. He answers questions about the DOJ prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler for “conspiracy,” including why a 2nd prosecution was in DC when the first was in Montana, where all the witnesses are. The NYT, at least, is entirely satisfied with Stone’s answers, asserting, “Whether the man whose prosecution he thought necessary was a Senator or a colored janitor made no difference to him.”

Nome, Alaska has a diphtheria outbreak. Antitoxin is being rushed there by dog sled. Should take a couple of weeks. 

Gloria Swanson marries Henri, the Marquis de la Falaise, her translator on “Madame Sans-Gêne,” a lost film which is being shot in France. This is the 25-year-old Swanson’s third marriage, but by no means her last.

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Today -100: January 28, 1925: Of child labor

The Constitutional Amendment permitting Congressional regulation of child labor has now been defeated by enough states that it cannot be ratified. Arguments against: it goes against states’ rights; it goes against parental rights; kids are perfectly well protected already; cotton mills need child labor; farms need child labor.

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Today -100: January 27, 1925: A Harlan Stone gathers no... no, that doesn’t really work, does it?

The Senate, in a secret session, an hour of which was spent complaining about all the leaks from the last secret session, which we know because of, you know, leaks, sends Harlan Fiske Stone’s Supreme Court nomination back to the Judiciary Committee. He will be called before the committee to explain his indictment of Sen. Burton Wheeler. It will be the first time a nominee to the Court ever had to testify, which is why we don’t know if the first 72 justices liked beer.

Coolidge wants the budget reduced to $3 billion, with all the savings going to tax cuts.

The Texas Senate rejects ratification of the Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Congress to regulate child labor, by a vote of 19 to 2.

Arthur Conan Doyle is opening a psychic bookshop. Near Westminster Abbey.

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Today -100: January 26, 1925: Of shoot-outs and immunity

Remember Herrin, Illinois, the location of so much Klan-related violence and nonsense last year? A shoot-out takes the lives of 6, evenly from both sides I think, including Glenn Young, the man employed by the Klan as a dry-raider who was briefly chief of police (I don’t think I knew at the time that that was during a day when the real chief of police had been kidnapped), and Deputy Sheriff Ora Thomas, the head of the anti-Klux faction, who shoot each other to death. It’s not clear which side fired first.

Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone is messing up his nomination to the Supreme Court by pursuing an obviously partisan, groundless conspiracy prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler, who led the investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal. Stone has offered to allow Wheeler to testify and to have his own witnesses at the DC Grand Jury – if, and only if, he waives his congressional immunity.

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Today -100: January 25, 1925: Of eclipses, the moral opinion of the community, wide-bottom trousers, earls, and torrios

There’s an eclipse. Which is evidently a huge deal. Someone needs to hurry up and invent television.

Pres. Coolidge repeats his support for the US joining the World Court. He says the Court doesn’t even need a military to enforce its decrees because it can do so through “intelligence of the mass of individuals and the moral opinion of the community.” Sure, let’s try that.

Coolidge also expresses his opinion on wide-bottom trousers, which college men are wearing these days, and he does not approve. DOES NOT APPROVE.

Former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is made an earl, the first Earl of Oxford and Asquith, which is another way of saying he’s given up on leading the Liberals back into power, which he can’t do from the House of Lords. Or from the Commons, where he lost his seat at the last election.

Chicago mob boss Johnny Torrio is shot five times in front of his home, a week after being convicted of Prohibition law crimes. This will precipitate his decision to retire, for a time anyway.

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Today -100: January 24, 1925: Covering his Butt

Prussian Minister-President (prime minister) Otto Braun and his cabinet resign, despite still holding a majority of the Diet, under an onslaught from the Communists and the Monarchists.

There’s a military coup in Chile, as was the custom.

A visiting British theatrical producer says American plays need a censor to curb their “daring outspokenness.” That producer: Sir Alfred Butt.

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Today -100: January 23, 1925: Of governors, leagues, kiddie workers, and radio

The Fergusons move into the Executive Mansion in Austin. Gov. Ma supervises the movers, saying she can be governor and housekeeper at the same time. Friends of her husband, the disgraced former governor, are suggesting to him that his hanging around the governor’s office every day is undermining her.

Costa Rica withdraws from the League of Nations, the first, but not the last, country to do so. I think they just found the dues to be too onerous.

The Oklahoma House rejects the child labor amendment to the US Constitution.

Theatrical producer Lee Shubert says the novelty of radio will wear off and people will return to the theatre.

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Today -100: January 22, 1925: It will be human

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson calls on the Legislature to cut taxes and to remove the Texas Rangers from Prohibition work (previous Gov. Pat Neff was a bit of a dry fanatic). She wants a tax on smoking.

The South Dakota State Senate and the Delaware House reject the Child Labor Amendment to the US Constitution.

A new magazine, The New Yorker, will appear next month. “It will be human,” says the announcement. “It will be what is commonly called sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. It will hate bunk.”

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Today -100: January 21, 1925: No bouquet

The Senate votes 40-30 to condemn the Harding Administration’s selling of the Teapot Dome leases. This finishes the matter as far as the Senate is concerned.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Hey, you know what might take the edge off?  A little opium. Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, the chief rep of (checks notes) Britain, rejects the US proposal for a goal of ending opium smoking in the Far East within 15 years, which he says would just be a farce. He is, however, forced to withdraw the comment he made yesterday that the US uses more opium & other narcotics than India, where they grow the stuff.

Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson is sworn in as governor of Texas, taking the traditional oath not to participate in any duels. “She carried no bouquet.”

During a trial of 10 Jersey City cops & 2 others, Sen. Edward Edwards (D-NJ), a man so almost nice they named him almost twice, is accused by a federal agent of being a bootlegger who was paid $3,800 for 100 cases of whisky in a sting operation. The deal fell through before any booze was delivered. Some of the testimony is a little implausible. The senator hasn’t been called as a witness (and won’t be).

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes tells Latin American countries that they should also adopt the Monroe Doctrine, which certainly isn’t about maintaining US hegemony in the hemisphere, perish the thought. Also, the failure to end the US occupation of Nicaragua is because the Nicaraguan president asked us to stay, and we’ll withdraw those marines from Haiti just as soon as there’s “a reasonable prospect of peace and stability.”

Leon Trotsky is (finally) fired as the minister of war. He is accused of expressing anti-, or at least non-Communist views. And he refused to acknowledge his mistakes. REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS MISTAKES.

A Connecticut man who owns a cat that can predict storms will offer him to Pres. Coolidge.

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Today -100: January 20, 1925: No practical work can be accomplished by yelling

Hans Luther appears before the Reichstag as German chancellor for the first time, to continuous interruptions from Communist deputies. Pissed off, he tells them, “I think I voice the feelings of the entire body when I tell you that no practical work can be accomplished by yelling.” Boy, he doesn’t know his country very well, does he.

The B’nai Sholem Temple Israel of Chicago is bombed, but it’s not anti-semitism: the temple was just sold to a black congregation.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, that’s actually Sol Bloom and not, as the NYT Index would have it, Sloom, because “Congressman Sloom Has Quinsy” sounds like a lesser Dr. Seuss book (today -100, by the way, Theodor Geisel is still at Dartmouth, a few months from adopting the moniker Dr. Seuss so he could secretly continue publishing in the college humor magazine after being caught hosting a gin party and possibly peeing out the window [he said it was seltzer] and being banned by Dean Craven Laycock – which is more... Dickens? Wodehouse?... than Seuss, really – from extracurriculars).

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Today -100: January 19, 1925: Be ready for a fight

Leon Trotsky is fired from the War Council. He is threatened, if he continues to show “disobedience,” with removal from the Politburo and Executive Committee. 

The NYT claims the election of Miriam “Ma” Ferguson as governor of Texas is the death knell for the Ku Klux Klan in that state. The Legislature is considering a bill to make assault by masked people punishable by death. 

Sunday was rally day in Germany, with Communists in Berlin rocking the slogan “Revolution is what we need,” and monarchists in Magdeburg told to “Be ready for a fight.” The Communists signify their opposition to the Dawes Plan with a man in an Uncle Sam costume leading a German worker by a chain.

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Today -100: January 18, 1925: Of tainted or perverted information, dancingest inaugurations, and sacramental wine

Coolidge warns a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors against propaganda: “Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much, but of propaganda which is tainted or perverted information we cannot have too little.”

Italy’s Parliament passes Mussolini’s electoral reform bill by 268 to 19, but strips the plural voting provisions, which I guess even Mussolini realized tipped power to the upper classes too much at the expense of the working classes. So it’s mostly about returning to single-member constituencies from proportional representation.

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will be sworn in as governor of Texas Tuesday and it will be the “dancingest” inauguration ever, despite the protests of certain church ladies. But there will be no Texas Rangers, because that body was just declared by a court to have been illegally constituted.

The Denver Catholic diocese says it will defy the new law against sacramental wine.

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Today -100: January 17, 1925: Of prohibition and ag

Coolidge thinks a proposed law providing for mandatory imprisonment for violating Prohibition laws is excessive.

Herbert Hoover declines to become secretary of agriculture, saying he can do more for farmers from Commerce.

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Today -100: January 16, 1925: No more disturbed than any other country

Tammany Hall leader Big Tom Foley, described as Gov. Al Smith’s “political godfather,” dies at 73.

Pres. Coolidge is considering moving Herbert Hoover from Commerce to Agriculture, which seems to me like a demotion.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Taylor Ross does the unthinkable.

Headline of the Day -100:  

NYPD Police Commissioner Richard Enright calls for everyone to be required to carry a police i.d. including their photograph and fingerprints. “While the Commissioner did not specify women, he was understood to have included them.” He’s just been on a tour of South America and this is the system in Buenos Aires. He also wants to register aliens, which he says would help solve the sporadic Tong wars in Chinatown which so baffle the police. And the feds should ban the sale of pistols. (An editorial tomorrow -100 wonders how long the i.d. photo would be kept: “The unfortunate man who loses his hair at 30 will be in danger of immediate arrest.”)

Poland and the Free State of Danzig may go to war over, um, mail boxes. Poland exceeded its treaty rights in the city by placing mail boxes, which it says it had a right to do and Danzig says it didn’t. Some Danzigers repainted the boxes in the old German imperial colors, and that’s when Poland started threatening war. The League of Nations Commissioner Mervyn MacDonnell is siding with city authorities over the whole, um, mail box deal.

A resolution in the Italian Parliament saying that it is impossible to hold a general election as long as the government suppresses newspapers and individual liberty is supported by former primes minister Giovanni Giolitti, Antonio Salandra and Vittorio Orlando.

Mussolini says “Italy is no more disturbed than any other country.”

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Today -100: January 15, 1925: Really too much

Italy’s Communist MPs end their boycott of Parliament in order to participate in the debate on Mussolini’s new electoral law. And by participate, I mean praise Lenin and Russia, sing the Red Flag, and denounce the bourgeoisie, while Mussolini says, “This is really too much.”

The Italian Freemasons dissolve ahead of the proposed law against secret societies.

German Finance Minister Hans Luther, who belongs to no party, forms a new cabinet, including 4 Nationalists. If I understand this correctly, Luther just went ahead and negotiated a cabinet without having been asked to do so by Pres. Ebert. This will be Weimar’s first right-wing government, but not its last.

Chicago bans the eating of raw oysters, punishable by a $25 fine. 

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Today -100: January 14, 1925: A coolness might result

French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot warns that “if the Soviets continue to carry out a Soviet policy in France, a coolness might result.” Grigori Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, recently ordered the French Communist Party to exert itself in the municipal elections, which is obviously scandalous.

Banker/forger Fred Pollman, who repudiated the pardon he bought from Kansas then-Gov. Jonathan Davis, tries to present his pardon to the new governor. Who refuses to accept it. The attorney general says they may have to declare Davis’s last pardons & paroles void.

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Today -100: January 13, 1925: Of bitter and unreasoning oppositions, secret societies, and musical commanders

Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son are arrested on the morning of the day his term expired rather than after he left office, as was expected. Davis complains that the arrest shows the “bitter and unreasoning opposition” to his governorship (bitter and unreasoning opposition is the worst kind of opposition). He claims to want his pardoning processes to be investigated by the Legislature. Were brown paper bags employed? that sort of thing, probably.

Mussolini introduces a bill to ban secret societies, i.e. the Masons.

Richard Strauss is given the new title of “Commander-in-Chief of Austrian Music.”

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Today -100: January 12, 1925: Of pardons and tommy guns

County Attorney Tinkham Veale, which is evidently a real name, will have Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son arrested immediately after his term ends today (the governor’s term, not the son’s) for taking bribes in exchange for pardons. All of his pardons (the governor’s, not the son’s) are being looked into, as well they should be.

If no one can form a majority cabinet in Germany, President Friedrich Ebert may use emergency powers to appoint a chancellor to operate without Reichstag support.

In Chicago, Al Capone’s car is shot up by gangsters with tommy guns, as was the custom. (Correction: Actually it wasn’t yet the custom. This is the very first use of a Thompson submachine gun in gang warfare.) Capone wasn’t in the car at the time, but inside a restaurant whose name I’ve been unable to discover. Capone will soon buy an expensive bullet-proof car. And have a few people killed in retaliation. As was the custom.

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Today -100: January 11, 1925: If unsophisticated natures, secretaries of state, and locals

The Allies give in to the US’s demand that it get a share in the reparations Germany will pay under the Dawes Plan, despite never having ratified the Versailles Treaty.

Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis attributes his son’s taking that bribe in exchange for a pardon, which he calls “indiscreet acts,” to his “unsophisticated nature.” Russell Davis apologizes for being “led into such a trap.” The state Justice Dept was already investigating other pardons. Convicted murderer Glenn Davis (no relation) says Gov. Davis refused him a pardon after he refused to pay a bribe (which he couldn’t afford).

The Kansas Supreme Court rules that the Ku Klux Klan is illegally operating as a business in the state, selling Klan paraphernalia and whatnot, and not as a benevolent society, and so cannot continue without a charter. What are the chances of it being issued a charter? Well, at the last election it tried and failed to defeat two of the Charter Board’s three members, the attorney general and secretary of state, so...

Charles Evans Hughes resigns as secretary of state so he can make some big lawyer bucks. He’ll be replaced by Ambassador to the UK Frank Kellogg.

Pres. Coolidge rejects the objections of Michigan congresscritters to his nomination of Charles Warren from that state to be attorney general. They think that there’s a home-state senator veto over appointments; he tells them there isn’t.

Local anesthesia is progressing. In a story suspiciously lacking the name of the patient or the hospital, a patient smoked a cigar and drank a highball while his appendix was being removed.

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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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