Today -100: March 2, 1925: America snapped it up

A federal dry agent, Orville Preuster, is blown up in his car in Niagara Falls. His friend Elmer Whitaker, who was cranking the car, is blown 40 feet away, injured, perhaps mortally. Bootleggers are suspected, but no one will ever be caught. As is often the case, the level of graphic detail in these stories is jarring: “Part of Preuster’s head was blown off and both legs were torn from the body.”

As part of his obsessive economy drive, Coolidge replaced paper cups at White House coolers with common drinking glasses, you know, one glass used by everyone. Rep. Allard Gasque (D-SC) asks if that doesn’t violate DC sanitary laws and, also, ick. Further, they’ve reduced the number of towels in the bathrooms, which might mean they aren’t being “sterilized” between users, which is also illegal.

Two Turkish women are running for the National Assembly, attempting to bring publicity to the cause of women’s suffrage (women will get the local vote in 1930, the national suffrage in 1934).

Cars in Rome will henceforth drive on the right side instead of the left. I think that’s just Rome.

French Guinea (West Africa) executes 6 medicine men (including one woman) convicted of cannibalism. They were all old, the woman saying she had hoped it would restore her youth but it didn’t so she was happy to be executed.

English inventor slash con man H. Grindell Matthews says he has sold his Diabolical Ray™ – no, wait, I guess he’s finally calling it a Death Ray. He says he gave England first chance to buy it but now “America snapped it up.” He’s no more specific than “America.” I guess this settles the fight in the Navy and Congress over whether planes or warships are the future of warfare, since Matthews claimed his ray can destroy both.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: March 1, 1925: Of eberts, earthquakes, and Harlem

German President Friedrich Ebert dies of peritonitis several days after an appendectomy. He was 54 and is survived by wife Louise Rump (!) and some kids, including Freddie Jr., who will be mayor of East Berlin for nearly 20 years.

An earthquake is felt in New York City and a bunch of eastern states. We don’t know what it is on the Richter scale because Charlie Richter hasn’t invented it yet, and we don’t know where the epicenter was because the recording pin fell off the seismograph at Fordham. New York cops advise people to stay in their homes to prevent opportunistic burglaries.

Headline of the Day -100: 

The NYT finally notices the Harlem Renaissance (as it was not yet called), although it mostly focuses on jazz. It also points out (warns?) that some among the “swarthy races” practice a thing called “passing.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 28, 1925: Of American branches of dictatorships, speakers, and beer halls

Count Mihály Károlyi, who was president of Hungary for 4 months in 1918-19 and then fled into exile, is currently in the US. When he came last year when his wife Katalin contracted typhoid fever while in New York, the State Department imposed a condition on his visa that he not talk about Hungarian politics while in the country. Now they’re allowing him to respond at a lunch in his honor (organized by the ACLU) to attacks made on him in Hungarian newspapers about money he raised in 1914 for Hungarian separatism. His lawyers say that’s not enough. The ACLU says the US is “muzzling a foreign visitor on behalf of a foreign Government... [acting] as the American branch of the Hungarian dictatorship.”

House Republicans elect as speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth, who is married to Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice.

Adolf Hitler loses a libel suit he launched against another right-winger, Otto Pittinger, for saying the Nazi movement was financed by French money. 

Odd that the NYT has that story but doesn’t mention that Hitler relaunched the no-longer-banned Nazi party yesterday. In a beer hall. Yes, that beer hall. He gives his first public speech since he was released from prison, two hours long, to a crowd of 3,000.

Joshua E. Russell, the federal prohibition director for Ohio, and 9 others, including Youngstown and Columbus politicians, are indicted for illegally withdrawing whisky from a distillery.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 27, 1925: We are better off in the Philippines than a lot of people think

The House Aircraft Committee hearings continue. Rear Adm. Hilary Jones of the Navy General Board denies the claim of Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service that the Philippines could be taken in two weeks. He won’t say how long it might take but says it would require more than air power alone; “We are better off in the Philippines than a lot of people think.” The Committee also questions retired Lt. Clifford Tinker about an article he wrote blaming Congress for failing to supply helium to the dirigible Roma, which crashed in 1922 with 34 dead, but then strike his testimony from the record.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning more than it used to.

The Democratic Indiana state senators who fled the state have won: the gerrymander bill has been withdrawn. They won’t even be arrested when they return.

Charles Ponzi is convicted, again, in Boston.

A black man, Joe Airy, is lynched when he draws his gun after being surrounded by a posse after killing a Louisiana highway officer.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 26, 1925: Of gerrymanders and charters

As Republicans in the Indiana State Senate attempt a gerrymander of Congressional seats, 14 Democrats flee for Dayton, Ohio to prevent a quorum being present (4 more remain in Indiana, but in hiding, I guess). The doorkeeper is to be sent to try to arrest them; he’s enlisting the Marion County Horse Thief Detective Association to find them. Indiana Republicans say the D’s can be indicted and extradited; Ohio officials say there’s no law allowing for such an extradition or for the Indiana sgt-at-arms of the General Assembly to arrest anyone in Ohio.

The Kansas State Senate votes to allow the Ku Klux Klan to operate in the state without a charter.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 25, 1925: Of Desire Under the Fleurs du Mal, or something

New York City will implement “play juries,” which will determine whether plays are dirty or not. There’s a jury pool of 130 persons, I forget how it was chosen, from which juries will be picked (in secret) by the police chief. They won’t have direct enforcement powers, but if they find a play unduly salacious, Actors Equity will pull its members from the production.  District Attorney Joab Banton is trying to extricate himself from the machinery of censorship, saying he’ll no longer make announcements about individual plays, like he did about Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms,” but if any press agent uses complaints for publicity, he might retaliate by bringing their plays before the Grand Jury. The producers of “Desire” are happy that the play jury might actually see the play before making a decision on it, unlike Banton, who didn’t even bother to read it (he says he based his decision on reports from “seasoned playgoers” and others).

As NY book publishers are developing their own self-censorship program, in France the Baudelaire Society demands the retraction of the 1857 censorship of his “Fleurs du Mal.” The cops recently seized a first edition which was to be sold by auction on the grounds that it should have been destroyed 68 years ago.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 24, 1925: Of reparations and over-excited actors

Con men in the occupied Rhine have been going around convincing businessmen that they work for the Allied occupation authorities and collecting “reparations.”

Headline of the Day -100:

85-year-old Fanny Weintraub, recruited from a Jewish old age home for “Salome of the Tenements.” A lost film.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 23, 1925: Oh, cross/crossing, I just got that

The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold celebrates its one-year anniversary in Magdeburg. I don’t really understand this group – largely veterans, organized along military lines to defend the Weimar Republic, but unarmed. They claim 3 million members.  Anyway, there are lots of Austrians present, and a bunch of boundary posts are burned.

The Ku Klux Klan re-enact Washington’s crossing the Delaware, in full regalia (robes, anyway, doesn’t say if they had hoods), with a red electric cross.

The ban on oysters in Chicago, spurred by that lethal typhoid outbreak, has been lifted and Chicagohoovians will no longer have to resort to oyster bootleggers, and I don’t know if that’s a real thing or a joke because, you know, Chicago.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 22, 1925: Of vetoes and boycotts

Gov. Miriam Ferguson of Texas vetoes a bill allowing legislators and their families to accept free railroad tickets. It’s the historic first veto by a woman governor.

The anti-Fascist deputies who’ve been boycotting the Italian Parliament since the Matteotti assassination will resume their seats so they can be ineffective closer to the center of the power they don’t have.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 21, 1925: I do not propose to be a goat

Former kaiser Wilhelm comes out against Germany having to pay reparations. Every combatant should pay its own expenses, he says.

NYC District Attorney Joab Banton has been pressuring theatre owners to rewrite or cancel “bad” plays. But after hearing that David Belasco was allowed to rewrite “The Harem” and “Ladies of the Evening” while he had been forced to withdraw “A Good Bad Woman,” William Brady says he’ll do the same and retracts his promise to cancel it. “I do not propose to be a goat.” The producers of Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” are refusing to give in to Banton, who threatened them with the grand jury. Banton says the play is so icky no changes would suffice to make it meet his exacting standards (the only standard alluded to in the article clearly enough to be deciphered is the word “bastard,” which Banton ordered excised from one of Belasco’s productions).

Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, assistant chief of the Army Air Service, deprecates the Navy’s claims that battleships can’t be sunk by airplanes and says the so-called test of this proposition with the Washington didn’t use real bombs, just dummies filled with sand. He proposes that he be given the battleship North Dakota to play with and says he’ll “blow it out of the water.”

The British Tory government gets Parliament to reject a Labour proposal to allow women to vote at 21 instead of 28 by promising to bring in a government bill for equal suffrage before the next general election. But the refusal of Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) to commit to that being at 21 raises suspicions because some Tories want to raise the voting age to 25.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 20, 1925: Of confiscation, evolution, and fakes

Pres. Coolidge calls for ending federal inheritance taxes, saying combined with state taxes “the total burden approaches, if it is not actually, confiscation.” He says it’s socialism “under the guise of a law to collect revenue.”

The North Carolina Legislature kills a resolution against the teaching of evolution in state schools.

Charlie Chaplin is in court, suing one of his imitators, Charles Amador, who performs on film as Charles Aplin, using such Little Tramp signatures as baggy pants, under-sized derby, and the walk. Chaplin testifies that it’s the combination of these elements that creates a character who is “a symbol, a satire on humanity.” He says people have been fooled into seeing the pretender’s movies.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 19, 1925: Of Navy backbones, helium, and swimmin’

The secretaries of war and the navy want Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service punished for expressing his pro-aeroplane, anti-battleship views to the House committee yesterday. Or that’s the rumor, which also says he’ll be called into the White House for a spanking (at any rate he will be demoted, then court-martialed, and then resign before the end of the year). The General Board of the Navy says battleships will continue to be the backbone of the Navy and have proven they can withstand aerial bombardment. They want an $80 million modernization program; Coolidge thinks $30 million is quite enough.

Headline of the Day -100:

Than who? Than what?

Charles Ponzi goes on trial in Boston for fraud in his 1920 Ponzi scheme.

The Senate bans the export of helium. 

As the 68th Congress winds down, the Senate spends most of a session discussing whether to create a swimming beach for negroes between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial on the opposite side of the tidal basin of the whites-only beach which was created in 1918. Finally, they strip funding for the segregated beach from the DC Appropriation Bill, closing it. In June it will be ordered dismantled. It was getting increasingly polluted and unsafe anyway. More here.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 18, 1925: A group of aircraft could wipe out New York in a day

The House Aircraft Committee hears from army and navy leaders in a closed-door session that US air defenses are weak AF (which does not here stand for Air Force). The continental US needs 106 pursuit planes but has 21, 106 attack planes but has 1, 58 bombers but has 24. Panama, Hawaii and the Philippines are also under-planed, if that’s a word, which it isn’t. Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service says “A group of aircraft could wipe out New York in a day. The only defense would be from the air.” He’s talking about an aerial poison gas attack rather than bombing.

Fighting for Coolidge’s nomination of Charles Warren to be attorney general, the White House publishes the defenses of the sugar companies, one of which Warren represented until his nomination, against an anti-trust action the FTC is hearing.

Florence Prag Kahn (R) is elected to Congress from northern California in a special election to replace her husband Julius Kahn, who died two months ago. She’ll be the first Jewish woman in Congress, the 5th overall, and will be in office until she loses the 1936 election. Maybe at some point her election will get more than a single paragraph on the bottom of page 3, next to a much longer article on Mussolini having the flu and below a slightly longer article on a city councilman in Bath, England proposing a tax on women who bob their hair.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 17, 1925: O Klanada

The Ku Klux Klan applies for incorporation in Canada.

(Update: the application will be rejected and the Klan mothership in Atlanta will deny knowledge of these kluxers).

Bavaria lifts the ban on the Nazi Party imposed after the Beer Hall Putsch. It’s still banned at the federal level.

There is opposition in the South African Parliament to the government’s Colour Bar Bill, no details of which are revealed by the NYT.

The new program of theatre censorship in Cincinnati takes its first scalp, with police ordering the Shubert to remove posters for “The Passing Show” which showed the actresses striking poses. STRIKING POSES!

Addison Procter, 86, the last surviving delegate to the 1860 Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln, gave a bunch of speeches on Lincoln’s birthday, then dropped dead.

Also dead: Edwin Harper Sampson, 82, the last survivor of the squad that buried John Wilkes Booth... somewhere. The location of that grave goes with Sampson to his own grave.

NY Republicans and Democratic Governor Al Smith both want to extend the term of governors from 2 years to 4, but R’s want to do it starting in 1928 and Smith wants gubernatorial elections to take place in even, non-presidential-election years so that state issues will dominate the elections.. Smith also wants to make the offices of secretary of state, state treasurer and state engineer, which are now elective, appointive.

The first issue of The New Yorker appears.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 16, 1925: Doomed, I tells ya!

Filibusters threatened in the Senate! The French spoliation claims and the Isle of Pines Treaty are doomed! Doomed!

The nomination of Charles Warren, Sugar Trust lawyer extraordinaire, as attorney general is in trouble.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 15, 1925: Of nominations and reverse-impeachments

Coolidge nominates Frank Kellogg, the ambassador to Great Britain, to be secretary of state, and William Jardine to be AgSec. Kellogg’s education ended before high school.

Cal also names George Parks the next governor of Alaska. Unlike every previous governor, he actually lives there. He’s a mining engineer, currently the Assistant Supervisor of Surveys of Public Lands for Alaska, but he had the luck to have shown Pres. Harding around on the Alaska wing of his last, fatal tour and made an impression with Harding’s entourage. No one is more surprised by the appointment than Parks.

Former Texas Gov. James Ferguson rejects the idea of a constitutional amendment to reverse his impeachment, because it would be expensive and would take place in the summer. No, he thinks the state senate should “resolve itself into a court” and undo the impeachment (which would allow him to run for state office again).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 14, 1925: Of pardons, treasonable and seditious offences, and short people

Although the Texas State Senate passed a pardon for the impeachment of former governor James Ferguson, husband of the current governor, the attorney general says they can’t do that, it would require a constitutional amendment.

The Irish Free State’s Dáil Éireann considers a Treasonable and Seditious Offences Bill adding forty (40) crimes, six (6) carrying the death penalty. The latter include levying war on the Free State or harboring people doing so. Other crimes: trying to “overawe” MPs or the governor-general, calling oneself president or any other such title, belonging to secret societies in the police or military, etc.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Cue Randy Newman song.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 13, 1925: Noble reasonableness is the best kind of reasonableness

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes tells the Lincoln Birthday Dinner that the US’s position in the world, free of commitments and entanglements, is noble reasonableness.

Theatrical censorship in Cincinnati, hitherto the job of the mayor’s secretary Newbold Pierson, which is a very theatre-censory name, will now be exercised by 9 people whose names will be secret, even from each other: 3 women, a minister, a lawyer, a broker, a banker, a businessman, and a doctor. They will attend all first nights and decide if there’ll be a second night, but hey, free theater tickets. They will “pay particular attention to the exposure of bare legs and the employment of suggestive lines and situations.”

The Italian National Council of Women protests the decision to refuse women the vote even in municipal elections (which must have slipped past me).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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:

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

Today -100: February 9, 1925: Of debts

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

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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:  

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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).

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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. 

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.”

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.

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.

Don't see comments? Click on the post title to view or post comments.