Today -100: June 23, 1925: Ferocious totalitarian will is the worst kind of totalitarian will, which is the worst kind of will

At the Italian Fascist Party’s fourth party congress in Rome, Mussolini says the party’s new slogan is “All power to Fascism,” and the Constitution must be changed because it’s just a hindrance now. He demands the Senate not obstruct him, or else. The NYT fails to note the reference in his speech to “our ferocious totalitarian will,” which is his first use of the recently coined word “totalitario.” The word “totalitarian” will not arrive in the English language until next year. “Totalstaat” will arrive in German in 1927.

The lower house of the Italian Parliament has passed a bunch of laws giving the Duck powers to pass laws without its approval, purge the civil service, suppress newspapers, etc etc. 

In a radio address, Pres. Coolidge calls for yet more tax cuts. The tax burden has been reduced, he says, but “the reduction has not reached the point where taxes have ceased to be a burden.”  Pretty much by definition. “Wastrels, careless administrators of the Government’s substance, are out of place in the Federal service. They will not be tolerated.”

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

Today -100: June 22, 1925: Which is the equivalent of some money

The ACLU announces a $10,000 Tennessee Evolution Case Fund.

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

Today -100: June 21, 1925: More fun and games in the Prohibition biz

In Huntington, West Virginia, federal and state prohibition agents looking for a still mistake each other for moonshiners and shoot each other up. Two dead, another possibly mortally wounded.

Rum-running cars near Baltimore use a smokescreen to evade capture.

French censors ban the sole British exhibit at the Paris Modern Arts Exhibition, which consisted of members of the public throwing tennis balls at a black man’s head.

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

Today -100: June 20, 1925: Of Fightin’ Belle La Follette, domes, Dirigo, and jay walking... in Paris? Heaven forfend.

Rep. John Nelson (R-Wisc., one of the two John Nelsons in the 69th Congress) is pushing for a change in Wisconsin state law to allow the governor to appoint Robert La Follette’s widow Isabelle to fill out his Senate term without a special election.

A federal district court judge in Wyoming rules that Sinclair’s Teapot Dome oil leases are valid, which is the opposite of the ruling by the district court in California against the Doheny Elk Hills leases. The judges disagree on whether the secrecy surrounding the deals had any military justification. The Wyoming judge says there is no evidence that Interior Sec. Albert Fall was bribed which, yeah, sure, whatever.

Donald MacMillan is planning an Arctic expedition. Maine Gov. Ralph Brewster throws him a farewell dinner and authorizes him to claim any lands he discovers in the name of... the state of Maine. “It will then remain for the federal government to determine whether it will recognize and protect our rights.”

The Italian Parliament gives Mussolini the power to fire civil servants who dare to hold non-Fascist political opinions, the “Fascistization of the Italian state,” as he likes to call it.

A Paris judge rules that jay walking is legal.

Actress Kathryn du Noule cross-dresses so she can enter that all-male space: a Chicago hanging.

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

Today -100: June 19, 1925: Of fightin’ bobs, poles, lynchings, and dog concerts

Fightin’ Bob La Follette, Progressive senator from Wisconsin, dies at 70. Whither the Progressive movement now?

The Roald Amundsen Arctic expedition is no longer missing, returning to Spitzbergen (Svalbard) in Norway. It got within 150, maybe 100 miles of the North Pole by plane but was thwarted by headwinds (and Amundsen’s underestimating how much gas he’d need). It returns without the plane, which turned out to be a seaplane but not so much an iceplane. They didn’t spot any land, so there may in fact not be land at the Pole. Bad luck, Canada, which already put in a claim for any land that might exist.

Near Castle Gate, Utah a black man, Robert Marshall, is lynched by a large mob, including Klansmen, after allegedly killing Town Constable James Milton Burns (whose father was also a law dude killed in action, in his case by sheep rustlers). The mob shoots Marshall a few times and hangs him twice. 11 members of the lynch mob will be arrested, including a deputy who basically handed Marshall over, as well as the city marshal, the superintendent of the Utah Fuel Company, and 4 charged with “pulling the rope.” None of the hundreds of witnesses will testify against them, so that will be that. This was the last lynching in the West. Supposedly it caused the fortunes of the Ku Klux Klan to decline in Utah, but 80% of the black people will leave Carbon County by the 1930 census.

There’s a demonstration in Vienna against a new regulation against bringing dogs on street cars and railways. The dog owners are threatening to hold a “dog concert” outside the house of the street car company’s director.

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

Today -100: June 18, 1925: Of chemical warfare

The Geneva Protocol for the Control of International Commerce is signed by 18 countries, including the US. A protocol on chemical warfare is signed by 29 countries, banning the use of poison gases but only against other signers of the protocol and not internally. It will go into effect in 1928.

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

Today -100: June 17, 1925: Of insecurity compacts

I haven’t mentioned that France is having a major colonial war in the Riff region of Morocco. Now I’ve mentioned it. Also, major upheavals in China.

Italy is refusing to adhere to a French-British security compact unless there’s a little sumthin’ sumthin’ in it for Italy. At the very least, it wants Britain to help protect the Brenner Pass on the Austro-Italian border. One element in the proposed Geneva Protocol which is especially pissing off Germany is the new French claim to a right to oppose by military means any union between Germany & Austria. Germany would also be required to negotiate arbitration deals with Poland and Czechoslovakia, which would allow France to send troops through Germany if those countries create trouble. The NYT’s source “close to Foreign Minister Stresemann” calls it an insecurity compact.

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

Today -100: June 16, 1925: A leopard-skin what now?

Secretary of State Frank Kellogg has been scolding Mexico over its supposed mistreatment of American property and citizens and property. Also property. President Plutarco Elías Calles called him out over the condescending nature of his statement, excuse me, “insult,” so Kellogg is preparing an insulting riposte.

Prince Edward, still in Swaziland, gets gifts, including a leopard-skin kilt. He suggests to Paramount Chief Sobhuza, who has been promoting education, that he focus a little less on book learning and a little more on learning from European farmers.

Lord Cromer, the English theatrical censor (the Lord Chamberlain), bans the performance of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, but only in English. It’s not clear why, and indeed it has been staged in London before, in English. So it has now been performed at the New Oxford Theatre in London in Italian. It’s not clear how many in the audience actually know Italian.

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

Today -100: June 15, 1925: I think he’s out-ranked

The Prince of Wales visits Swaziland (Eswatini) and meets the official rainmaker, who is the Supreme Chief’s mother. Can Edward even make rain? The people of Basutoland seemed to think so.

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

Today -100: June 14, 1925: Of Gennas and Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressives

In Chicago, tit-for-tat violence between the Genna Gang and the North Side Gang takes out Michele “Mike the Devil” Genna, leader of the Genna Gang. A shoot-out between the two gangs is followed by one with the cops, two of whom are killed, Genna receiving a fatal bullet in the leg. Time is running out on the Genna brothers as a force in gangland, and I think you can guess who the beneficiary of that will be (hint: he has a scar on his face).

A Brooklyn judge refuses to approve the incorporation of the Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressive Society, because “the name is un-American” and the organizers don’t even seem to be from Hwerchnedneprowsker. Which, as far as I can tell, isn’t an actual place, so the Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressive Society remains a mystery.

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

Today -100: June 13, 1925: Scopes in the big citiy

John Scopes, in New York City to meet with his attorneys, has been flooded with offers to write for syndicates and appear in films, $170,000 of offers in total. He has refused them all. When he goes to the Follies, not accepting a free ticket although shocked that it cost $7.50 – scalper’s rates, I think – he refuses to let his friend inform Will Rogers that he’s in the audience.

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

Today -100: June 12, 1925: Murder in the sky!

Another aviation novelty: A diamond merchant flying from Vienna to Budapest transporting diamonds is murdered by his secretary and the pilot. Chloroformed and thrown overboard. The secretary then kills the pilot and escapes to Bulgaria, never to be found. Anyway, this is the first murder on an aeroplane.

D.C.’s last 3 fire horses, all with more than a decade of service, will retire. When Washingtonians heard they might be transferred to the Street Cleaning Dept, they raised $100 to retire them to the farm of the Home for Feeble and Infirm. Rude.

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

Today -100: June 11, 1925: Take me out to the oooooop’ra, Take me out with the crooooowd

Coming later in the month: a production of Verdi’s Aida in Yankee Stadium, with horses and camels and elephants and hundreds of performers and starring Marie Rappold. Prices will range from $1 all the way up to $1.50.

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

Today -100: June 10, 1925: Of stigmata of blockhead, cheese, and flags

Bainbridge Colby volunteers to join John Scopes’s legal team (for free). It won’t happen for whatever reason, like H.G. Wells appearing as a witness for the defense, but wouldn’t it have been fun to have two of Woodrow Wilson’s secretaries of state arrayed against each other? Come to think of it, the ACLU would really love to bring in another former secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, which won’t happen either.

To the criticism that Clarence Darrow shouldn’t be fronting this case because he’s an atheist, Darrow says he’s actually an agnostic. 

George Bernard Shaw weighs in on William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalism: “It is a part of a stigmata of blockhead.” He adds, “What he calls fundamentalism I call infantilism.”

Headline of the Day -100:

I just assumed this is what the French Sénat discusses all the time. Sorry, but the following admittedly weak joke is kind of obligatory: If it’s not made in the Roquefort region of France, it has to be called sparkling fromage.

The German Reichstag rejects a motion to restore the flag’s colors to monarchist black, white & red.

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

Today -100: June 9, 1925: Every idea is an incitement

Benjamin Gitlow, a former one-term Socialist member of the NY State Assembly and the Workers Party of America’s candidate for vice president in 1924 who was convicted of “criminal anarchy” under New York’s anti-anarchism law in 1920 for his role as business manager of The Revolutionary Age and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison, loses his appeal in the US Supreme Court. Justice Edward Sanford says the 1919 manifesto Gitlow published was a “direct incitement” rather than an “expression of philosophical abstraction.” He says states have the right to stamp down on ideas because a “single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smoldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration.” Holmes, dissenting along with Brandeis, says the “clear and present danger” standard was not met and disagrees that the manifesto constituted incitement, writing “Every idea is an incitement.”

Free-speech wise, Gitlow v. New York wasn’t a total loss. In fact, it expanded the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to the states, in this case due process relating to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

On July 1st, Japan will hold a National Humiliation Day to protest America’s racist immigration laws.

Headline of the Day -100:

Philip Bonifant, 40, who had cancer and an interesting idea of fun.

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

Today -100: June 8, 1925: Fez-less

Turkish men now wear hats! A judge evidently found a loophole in the Koran. Straw hats are appearing in Turkey for the first time.

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

Today -100: June 7, 1925: Of measles and sabbaths

Dicky Loeb of Leopold ‘n fame is pronounced insane in Joliet Prison following a bout of the measles.

Texas Gov. “Ma” Ferguson postpones the executions of two black brothers for 5 days so they won’t take place on a Sunday. A lynch mob who tried to kill them was thwarted, but the article does not say on what day of the week that occurred.

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

Today -100: June 6, 1925: Deep Teutonic gloom is the worst kind of gloom

The Allies send a note to Germany listing steps they demand it take to rectify violations of the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty, including abolishing the general staff and reorganizing of the army, ending military training in private clubs and patriotic societies, ending military and gas warfare training, reducing the size of the national police, dismantling some factories and machinery in factories, withdrawing 8,000 steel helmets worn by cops, reducing the numbers of uniforms and gas masks and saddles and army officers beyond the requirements of the small German army as limited by the Treaty. To prevent the creation of an easily expandable core army, the training of reserve officers should be banned, only 12-year enlistments allowed, and soldiers must hop on one leg at all times. The Allies will continue occupying Cologne until Germany complies. Germany says the Treaty does not give the Allies the right to tell Germany how to run its army and that the demand for destruction of factories is aimed at German economic competition, for example in cheap automobiles. The Allied note “arouses only disapproval and anger, and deep Teutonic gloom.”

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

Today -100: June 5, 1925: Of astronomers and royal beds

For some reason, there’s an obit of French astronomer and weirdo Camille Flammarion on the NYT’s front page, with a picture and everything.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Germany will open the former kaiser’s former rooms at the Berlin Imperial Palace(Königliches Schloss) to the general public.

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

Today -100: June 4, 1925: Of new barbarians and bosh

Columbia Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler, addressing commencement exercises, denounces the “New Barbarians” who are trying to create a “sort of spineless corporate opinion which, operating by prohibitions and compulsions, aims to reduce all individuality, whether of mind or of character, to a gelatinous and wobbling mass.” He accuses Tennessee of “violently affronting the popular intelligence and [making] it impossible for a scholar to be a teacher in that state without becoming at the same time a law-breaker.” That’s a reference to the anti-evolution law, of course. He also deprecates Indiana, because, er, I’m not sure.

Anyway, there was a time when the Columbia administration was against spinelessness.

Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay, one of Butler’s New Barbarians, says evolution is “all bosh” and the Scopes trial won’t last more than 30 minutes.

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

Today -100: June 3, 1925: Not everyone’s cut out to be an actor

Coolidge scotches plans to have actor Ramon Navarro filmed at the Annapolis commencement receiving a dummy diploma from Coolidge for a scene in “The Midshipman.” Surprisingly, Navy Sec. Curtis Wilbur approved the idea before Coolidge rejected it (and he’ll take Coolidge’s place in the scene).

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

Today -100: June 2, 1925: The child is not the mere creature of the State

Thomas R. Marshall, aka Whatsisname, vice president under Woodrow Wilson and governor of Indiana before that, dies at 71 in the Willard Hotel, while reading the Bible. His Famous Quote, and the only thing he is remembered for: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

Deciding the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court unanimously overturns Oregon’s Ku Klux Klan-backed law requiring children (as of 1926) to attend public schools, a law aimed at putting Catholic parochial schools out of business, which the Court says would be depriving them of their property without due process. Justice James McReynolds writes, “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” saying parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This case marks the beginning of the extension of the 14th Amendment to the states. The NYT editorial page thinks this decision bodes ill for Tennessee’s anti-evolution law when it reaches the Supreme Court (Spoiler Alert: it won’t reach the Supreme Court).

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

Today -100: June 1, 1925: Of mayors and reading without comment

NYC Mayor John Hylan has put a little too much emphasis on the 5¢ transit fare as the basis of his reelection campaign. His Board of Transportation has scuppered that by reporting that the new subway system requires at least an 8¢ fare unless property taxes are increased, a lot, so his chances of a third term do not look good. Tammany Hall is looking around for a replacement candidate. The R’s very much don’t have a candidate.

The ACLU plans to challenge a Delaware law fining any teacher who fails to do compulsory Bible reading “without comment.”

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

Today -100: May 31, 1925: Of less-than-national defense

Gov. Albert Ritchie says Maryland will boycott Coolidge’s “National Defense Day” on July 4th because Marylandahoovians already have plans for that day.

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

Today -100: May 30, 1925: He Has Brought Rain and Peace!

In New York, a messenger is robbed of $20,000 worth of, well... “It was the first radium holdup ever reported in New York.” The messenger works for Dr. Isaac Levin, who has a private practice and is director of the Cancer Institute; the messenger carries radium between the two places. The police note that the robbers may wind up dying of radiation poisoning, or at least get nabbed when they show up at a hospital with radium burns, but they don’t seem to have a problem with the messenger carrying a box o’ radium under his arm on a street car every day. Dr. Levin thinks the robbers assumed they were getting a bag of cash or something and will probably just throw the radium away, which doesn’t seem to worry him; he says at least the radium was insured.

A newly discovered malady, “radium necrosis,” is killing women employed in brushing the stuff onto watch dials to make them glow-in-the-dark. See, they lick their brushes to maintain the shape...

On his tour of British colonies, the Prince of Wales is supposedly always greeted rapturously by natives. The people of Basutoland (Lesotho) shout “He Has Brought Rain and Peace!”

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

Today -100: May 29, 1925: This deprives disarmament demands of their moral basis

A District Court judge rules in favor of the government in cancelling naval oil leases granted by Interior Sec. Albert Fall in 1922 to Edward Doheny’s companies in Elk Hills and the contract for construction of oil storage facilities at Pearl Harbor, citing Fall and Doheny’s “fraud and conspiracy.” Judge McCormick also rules that Pres. Harding’s transfer of the Elk Hills and Teapot Dome reserves from the Dept of the Navy to Interior was illegal. He also notes that... someone... tore Fall’s signature from the note for the $100,000 “loan” from Doheny so that, if someone else got hold of the note, Fall wouldn’t be legally obligated to repay it.

German Defense Minister Otto Gessler insists that Germany “is disarmed. Germany cannot wage war. Germany is not preparing secretly for war.” It is, though. Oddly, he admits that in the past Germany broke the Versailles Treaty by enlisting excess numbers of military recruits and manufacturing excess munitions, but says they aren’t doing that now. He notes that the increase in size of European militaries – half a million more soldiers than in 1914, even with the limits on Germany, Austria & Bulgaria – “deprives disarmament demands of their moral basis.” He reassures everyone: “Germans are not the kind of people who can secretly prepare for war – they are too poor and too talkative.” Color me reassured.

Vienna University is closed for 5 days (including the weekend) because of Hakenkreuzler (Nazi) students attacking Jewish Socialist students and women students with bobbed hair. The Jewish students have been fighting back, not sure about the bobbed-hair ones.

Headline of the Day -100:

Tom Lee, referred to as a negro, even a “swarthy Memphis negro,” 3 times in a two-paragraph article, saved 32 people when a steamer sank in the Mississippi River. The Memphis News-Scimitar brought him to the White House. Do we want to see a photo? Sure, why not.

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

Today -100: May 28, 1925: Of teapots and assassinations

Former Interior Sec. Albert Fall and oil tycoons (oil tycoons are the oiliest kind of tycoon) Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair are indicted (again) for conspiracy to defraud the government in acquiring the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills oil leases. There’s not also a bribery charge because the only evidence that Doheny “lent” Fall $100,000 is that he, um, admitted it before a Senate committee.

Corneliu Codreanu, Romanian student and founder of the fascist Iron Guard, is acquitted for assassinating the Jassy police chief in retaliation for the alleged bad treatment of anti-Semitic dickhead students. There’s a large celebration of anti-Semitic dickhead students in Bucharest.

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

Today -100: May 27, 1925: Of gases and riffs

The Amundsen polar expedition is still missing! Coolidge is open to the idea of sending a giant dirigible to the rescue.

The conference on international arms trafficking will not ban or otherwise regulate the export of poison gases, but will recommend that there be another conference on chemical warfare.

Headline of the Day -100 That Sounds Kinda Dirty But Isn’t:

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

Today -100: May 26, 1925: Of certain theory and theories, any aliens, and death in Bulgaria

The Amundsen polar expedition is still missing!

Coolidge approves a “National Defense Day” on July 4 to, I guess, muster every potential soldier. However, governors will be free to nope out their states.

Nope out? Did I use that correctly?

Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher John Scopes is indicted for teaching evolution. Judge Raulston, who will preside (badly) over the trial, reads out the first book of Genesis to the Grand Jury. Scopes is charged with “unlawfully and wilfully” teaching “certain theory and theories that deny the story of the Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and did teach thereof that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

Thereof?

The Supreme Court rules that Hidemitsu Toyota, who served 7 years in the Coast Guard and applied for citizenship under the law naturalizing “any alien” who served in the military, can’t be a citizen because he’s Japanese (he actually received citizenship in 1921 but it was subsequently revoked) and Congress couldn’t possibly have meant “any alien” to include filthy Japs. The Court also denies the petition of ethnic Chinese who have US citizenship because they were born in the US to bring in their Chinese wives.

I have been unable to determine what happened to Mr. Toyota.

The Supreme Court rules unanimously that it is legal for newspapers to publish the names of income-tax payers and the amounts they paid.

King Boris of Bulgaria disregards his past opposition to the death penalty, decreeing death for 3 of the plotters in the Sofia church bombing. They’ll be publicly hanged in two days by hangmen described as “swarthy gypsies.”

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

Today -100: May 25, 1925: Of assassination plots and quiet Anschlusses

Mexico claims to have thwarted a plot to assassinate Pres. Elías Calles. They arrest pretty much every official of the Mexico City suburb of General Anaya. Many weapons are discovered in the mayor’s house, but that may just be because town officials have a practice of holding up automobiles and grabbing any weapons found in them. As you do.

While Austria is so far getting no traction in its campaign to get the international community to let it merge with Germany, it’s been quietly adjusting its legal and educational systems to conform with Germany’s to make integration easier when it comes. Also, there are cheaper stamps for mail between Austria & Germany than with other countries, and they’re negotiating eliminating visa requirements.

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

Today -100: May 24, 1925: Oh, I don’t think they’ll have to worry about successors

Roald Amundsen’s North Pole expedition hasn’t been heard from since its planes took off from Spitzbergen. They may have ditched the planes.

Sanford White, the first US governor of Hawaii, appointed by McKinley, who before that was president of the Hawaiian Republic, tells the NYT that he opposes statehood because then governors would be elected rather than appointed by the president and that might result in (gasp) a Japanese governor.

Italians worry that poor Benito is working himself to death and there is no obvious successor.

That article says that under The Duck, the trains run on time.

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

Today -100: May 23, 1925: All things considered, I’d rather be divorced in Philadelphia

At the Geneva conference on international arms sales, Poland and Romania say they need special consideration due to their proximity to Russia (which is not participating in the conference – I’m not sure if that was its own choice). Greece says in that case, the neighbors of the neighbors of Russia should also get special consideration...

Philadelphia courts have been granting hundreds of divorces a month, Pennsylvania’s loose divorce laws (they never require a jury trial anymore) making it a destination divorce spot, certainly cheaper than Paris. The residence requirement is stricter than Nevada’s, at 12 months, but many just rent a room and don’t actually live there. There’s no legal requirement for divorce papers to be served, so one party may not even know they’re divorced now.

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

Today -100: May 22, 1925: Of mobs & peeresses

A 300-person mob attacks the county jail in Dallas in an attempt to lynch two black men, but is driven back by cops & firemen with about 30 shots fired, mostly in the air. There does seem to be a general trend towards law enforcement actually trying to enforce the law in the face of lynch mobs.

The British House of Lords defeats a bill to allow women to sit in the Lords, by only 2 votes. Lord Lamington worries that a government in conflict with the Lords would swamp it with wives and daughters of its MPs; why, we might even be “inundated by a number of very seductive ladies”. Women will be allowed in from 1958 (life peers) and 1963 (hereditary peers).

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

Today -100: May 21, 1925: Talking takes away all the illusion

In the German Reichstag, the Socialists bring a motion of no confidence, focusing on the government’s plans for protective tariffs, especially on foodstuffs, showing, they say, the domination of the government by Prussian Junkers.

Kansas’s former governor Jonathan Davis, who was arrested on his last day in office in January for selling pardons, is acquitted despite being guilty as fuck. He declares himself vindicated, as “I expected and deserved.” Other charges remain. He’ll beat those too, but will never hold elected office again, despite running for governor & US senator a bunch of times.

The Wisconsin State Assembly petitions Pres. Coolidge to call a constitutional convention to repeal the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). It also calls for a state referendum on legalizing 2.75% beer. The Drys attempt to substitute “milk” for “beer” and are shouted down by calls of “We want beer,” which I believe is the state motto.

Thomas Edison says static will never be completely eliminated from radios, and that talking-type and color motion pictures will never be commercially viable. “Talking takes away all the illusion and spoils many scenes that would otherwise be effective.”

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

Today -100: May 20, 1925: Competing monkey trials

Dayton, Tennessee is very upset about Chattanooga’s plans to indict one of its teachers for teaching evolution, potentially stealing publicity away from Dayton’s trial and maybe even beating it to the punch.

Mussolini finally musters a quorum in the Chamber of Deputies to ban secret societies (i.e., the Freemasons). The vote is unanimous.

French Impressionist painter Armand Guillaumin, 84, proclaims himself rejuvenated by a procedure involving blood transfusions from young girls.

Headline of the Day -100:

Charles Amador is also enjoined from calling himself “Charles Aplin,” as well as wearing the distinctive mustache, cane, baggy pants, etc. (Except for the name thing, the injunction will be overturned in July).

If Chaplin now has one copyright-protected face, his opposite must be “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney, whose film The Unholy Three, directed by Tod Browning, premieres today.

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

Today -100: May 19, 1925: I want to see war considered a crime

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) says he opposes the League of Nations and World Court because their underlying principle is that force is the mainstay of government. “I want to see war considered a crime.”

Rep. Louis McFadden (R-Penn.), chair of the Banking and Currency Committee and a massive anti-semite, as well as two brokerage firms, are sued for lying on an affidavit, something about a stock issue for a radio company that claimed it did radio shit that it did not do.

Headline of the Day -100:

William Cavalier, 14 at the time of his trial for killing his grandmother.

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

Today -100: May 18, 1925: Log cabins

Bird Sim Coler, NYC commissioner for public welfare, laying the cornerstone of a hospital, says that with hospital births supplanting home ones, there will soon be no more presidents born in log cabins. In fact, the last president born in an actual log cabin was James Garfield, in 1831, but presidents were all born at home until Jimmy Carter, the first prez born in a hospital.

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

Today -100: May 17, 1925: The greatest possible good to our friends, the greatest possible harm to our enemies

The US demands that 9 nations with debts from the Great War start repaying their loans (and this means YOU, France).

Mussolini fails to get Parliament to pass his ban on secret (i.e., Masonic) societies after deputies walk out, preventing a quorum. And this even after the Duck gave this rationale for the ban: “We must do the greatest possible good to our friends, the greatest possible harm to our enemies.”

The municipal women’s suffrage bill Mussolini supported has been narrowed in the Chamber of Deputies: women over 25, but only if they have military medals or ones for civil valor or merit in elementary teaching or... public sanitation; or mothers of war dead or war widows; or guardians of children; or who have elementary education; or pay 40 lire in taxes and are also able to read and write. Women can hold local offices except mayor, assessor, or council head.

Another Mussolini bill: Prince Umberto’s allowance would be increased 50% if he married. He’s 20.

Dayton, Tennessee teacher John Scopes, who the NYT is for some reason calling Professor Scopes – do they think small-town Tennessee high schools are staffed by professors? – says he didn’t even know he was breaking the law when he taught evolution. He says he’s heard that Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone have offered to defend him (without taking pay or expenses) and he’s pleased. He will later insist on them participating over the ACLU’s objections, demonstrating a better understanding of what was going on than they did.

King George V has taken to wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which are an American thing and have been widely mocked in Britain, although presumably that all stops now.

Headline of the Day -100:

They’re all like, “’Sup, dude.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Funny, I always figured them more as butt guys.

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

Today -100: May 16, 1925: All this does not change the poetry of life

Gen. Nelson Appleton Miles, who joined the army during the Civil War, becoming a general at 25, and later killed him some Injuns and some Pullman railroad strikers, and was military governor of Puerto Rico and commanding general of the US Army, dies at 85 in a manner befitting his life: dropping dead at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. In 1904 he refused the Prohibition Party nomination for president; it instead went to (ahem) Silas Swallow. He was wounded several times in the Civil War. 36 years after a Confederate sharp-shooter shot him in the belt buckle, they met and the soldier said that all things considered he was glad he hadn’t killed Miles.

Mussolini succeeds in convincing Parliament to give women the vote. Well, the vote in municipal elections anyway. Ironically, it’s an exercise in macho dominance because most Fascists deputies do not like the idea at all, but fall in line anyway. The Duck says “I have never met a woman who asked me for the vote.” He says in this, the “century of capitalism,” women are obliged to work. “However, all this does not change the poetry of life.” Not the limericks, anyway. Oddly, he says he’s actually “pessimistic” about the value of women’s suffrage: “I know it will not bring a cataclysm, but I do not believe it will bring much good, or, in fact, change matters much.” He also says that in his forthcoming mobilization orders, women will be conscripted during wartime.

Pres. Coolidge rejects the Anti-Saloon League’s suggestion that he use the Navy to enforce Prohibition.

After school board elections in Elmsford, Westchester County, New York, school principal Howard Lee Holden is forced out because of his habit of beating pupils with a rubber hose.

The late Anatole France had a very light brain.

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

Today -100: May 15, 1925: Rhenium! Don’t put it on ice creamium!

During the January solar eclipse, a new element was discovered in the sun by x-ray spectroscopy. According to Prof. Frederick Slocum of the Van Vleck Observatory, who had nothing to do with the discovery, scientists are not prepared to bestow a name on the element at this time. This blog can reveal, exclusively, that that element was ultimately named rhenium (it would have been nipponium if its original Japanese discoverer some years ago hadn’t mistaken it for element 43).

NY Mayor John Hylan gets vaccinated against smallpox to set a good example. There are currently 6 cases of smallpox in the city, but it has a stronger hold in other cities.

The Italian Parliament opens. Mussolini’s priorities: women’s suffrage (which is not popular among Fascists in general), a new constitution, and cracking down on Freemasons and the press.

H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon’s Mines, She, etc., dies at 68.

A mob pulls black man Jack West from a train and lynches him near Longwood, Florida.

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

Today -100: May 14, 1925: One lord a-leeping

Headline of the Day -100:

He says the battle is between 11,000 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science versus 109 million Americans. “For the first time in my life I’m on the side of the majority.”

Leon Trotsky is back in Moscow after an 8-month absence officially attributed to illness but which no one believes was due to illness. He is elected to the Presidium to louder applause than, say, Stalin.

Lord Alfred Milner, the 1st (and last) Viscount Milner, 71, governor of the Cape Colony (1897-1901) and of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony (1901-1905), secretary of state for War (1918-1919), sec. state for the Colonies (1919-1921), and, like all arch-imperialists, prominent opponent of women’s suffrage, dies of sleeping sickness after a visit to South Africa, or, as the NYT index puts it,

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is published.

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

Today -100: May 13, 1925: Guess who’s going to Tennessee!

At a NYC Board of Aldermen meeting, Aldercritter George Harvey condemns the NYPD’s issuing of special “P.D.” plates to at least 250 people whose identities have been kept secret and who use them to drive however they damned well feel like. Harvey wants a list of plate-holders. Some rich dudes admit to possessing them including the presidents of the American Car and Foundry Company, the Empire Safe Deposit Company, and Brooklyn Edison; also the maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf. Harvey calls for the withdrawal of plates from non-cops.

Headline of the Day -100:

Paul von Hindenburg, 77, is sworn in as president of Germany. Is there goose-stepping? You bet your ass there’s goose-stepping.

Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan will act as lawyer for the World’s Christian Fundamental Association in the Scopes trial. I think he last practiced law in the 1880s.

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

Today -100: May 12, 1925: Of monarchist roars, little ententes, and reasonable racist laws

Headline of the Day -100:

Monarchist roars are... not the worst kind of roars ever heard in Berlin. Republicans and Communists stay away, maybe less a boycott and more fear of violence and arrest. “One old man who boasted the honor of cheering three Kaisers in Berlin streets dropped dead when the Presidential car sped by.”

Bulgarian courts-martial convict 8 for the Sofia church bombing, sentencing them to death by public execution, but only 3 are actually in custody.

The Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia) conference, meeting in Bucharest, issues what amounts to an ultimatum to Austria: expel Communists from Vienna, reduce government spending, end the demand for union with Germany. Austrian Vice-Chancellor Leopold Waber responds that Austria is burdened with having to pay pensions and such for Czechs living in Austria who should have been expelled (I suspect he’s most irked by the presence of foreign Jews).

The Supreme Court upholds California’s racist land law, saying the ban on American citizens selling land to Japanese does not violate the 14th Amendment (perish the thought) or the 1911 treaty between the US & Japan. The opinion, written by Harding appointee Pierce Butler, says the ban is perfectly reasonable.

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

Today -100: May 11, 1925: Astir

Berlin is “all astir” over Hindenburg’s forthcoming inauguration. The Communists are certainly all astir, which is why the police have banned them from demonstrating against the former field marshal. They’ve also banned bands, so no oompahing (or possibly oom-pahing; the internet is divided on the correct spelling) for Mr. von H. Also no monarchist marches.

Interesting (but ridiculous) rumors about George Bernard Shaw: 1) He’s writing a play called “The Trial of Jesus,” 2) He’s converted to Catholicism.

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

Today -100: May 10, 1925: Of imperial colors

Evidently the oath Hindenburg will have to swear is not only to the Weimar Republic’s constitution but also to its flag, so republicans are arguing that monarchist plans to display banners for his inauguration in the imperial colors (black, white, red) are inappropriate. Berlin police ban carrying arms in the celebratory events.

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

Today -100: May 9, 1925: Multi-fasching

The Coast Guard claims that rum-runners are sabotaging its vessels, which keep mysteriously blowing up. They’re setting the stage for a shoot-to-kill policy.

Accumulating more and more government posts, Mussolini names himself Minister of the Navy. He is also currently in charge of foreign affairs, the army, and the air force.

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

Today -100: May 8, 1925: Of anti-Reds, refugees, and duties

Bulgaria is trying to start a Balkan anti-Red union. Looks like Bulgaria is taking advantage of the attack on the Sofia church to try to assert leadership in the region, like after the First Balkan War when it thought it was going to lead a Balkan Empire and even started designing royal crests, only to have all the other countries turn on it in the Second Balkan War.

Austria refuses to expel political refugees from Vienna, as has been requested by neighboring countries complaining about Communist plots.

The British Parliament restores the duties, originally imposed by the last Liberal government and then dropped by the last Labour government, on motor cars, musical instruments, films and timepieces. Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill says too much fuss is made about duties and he only reimposed them because Philip Snowden’s cancelling of them was a partisan act and he (Churchill) wants to underline that. Churchill is accused in return of being forced to do this to prove his new loyalty to the Tories.

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

Today -100: May 7, 1925: In which we learn what job has no place in a republican form of government. Is it a king? It’s probably a king.

The German Social Democrats call for the election of Paul von Hindenburg as president to be annulled because of election irregularities. Schools in Prussia will close for Field Marshal H’s inauguration.

Michigan Gov. Alex Groesbeck vetoes a bill allowing him to appoint a state poet laureate, calling it a “monarchical custom” which “has no place in a republican form of government.” 

By arrangement, Dayton, Tennessee teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching evolution.

An anti-evolution bill is being considered in Florida, whose ban on evolution-teaching would include universities that receive state funds, which I believe the Tennessee law does not.

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

Today -100: May 6, 1925: Altruistic twaddle is the... you know, I don’t know

NYC Mayor John Hylan announces his bid for re-election for a third term. He is currently resisting the state government and indeed state law in attempting to dig a Staten Island tunnel that can accommodate freight cars; the state insists it be used only for passenger train service. Although ground was broken in 1923, that dispute will have halted work by the end of the year. The incomplete tunnel is still down there. Other Hylan issues are also mostly public transportation things, which he expresses in slogan form as the five-cent fare, the traction trust, the billion-dollar prize, and the subsidized press. The “billion-dollar conspiracy” consists of “the traction ring” scheming to replace the current Board of Estimate so it can increase fares, take over the transit system and profit from giving out bus routes.

Bulgaria outlaws Communists, who are being hunted and killed, and killing government forces in return.

Washington Gov. Roland H. Hartley (R) refuses to name a delegate to a national conference on child welfare, saying children are “being made to pay the penalty for an overabundance of altruistic twaddle.” We should “stop a lot of this uplift gush. ... Can we wonder that our children go wrong? Petted, pampered, educated at the expense of the State, robbed of self-reliance and independence, we send them forth as weaklings to take up the rugged path of life for themselves.” Probably best not to google “uplift gush.” I mean I don’t know that for sure, taking my own advice, but you do you.

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

Today -100: May 5, 1925: Or burnings at the stake

France bans any Joan of Arc Day parades in Paris on Sunday because they might lead to violent clashes.

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

Today -100: May 4, 1925: Klux around and find out

King Alexander of Yugoslavia orders his brother Prince George interned as insane. George is given to wild behaviour and in 1909 George was forced to renounce any claim to the throne after he kicked a servant to death. He’ll remain incarcerated until freed by the Germans during World War II. After the war, He’ll be the only member of the royal family not banished by Tito (or assassinated earlier, like King Alex) and will die in 1972 at the age of 85.

El Salvador’s Congress passes a motion banning entry by non-whites.

Another attack on a Klan rally. Protesters throw stones at the kluxxers as they leave a field outside Berlin, Massachusetts. And in Baldwin, Massachusetts, Arthur Baker is hit by a stone while leading a Klan parade. I strongly condemn this action because, and only because, they might have hit the horse he was riding. He & 2 others are arrested for holding a parade without a permit.

Britain’s Prince Edward wins over Boer nationalists in Cape Town by speaking to them in Afrikaans, having painstakingly memorized and haltingly recited, “Meneere, ek is baie bly julle vanaant te ontmoet, en ek bedank julle nogmals vir julle warme welkom!” (“Gentlemen, I am very pleased to meet you tonight, and I thank you again for your warm welcome!”). Eddie didn’t like the “Dutch” at all, as letters to his mother show, but hid it well.

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

Today -100: May 3, 1925: When you’re tired of Morocco, you’re tired of life

Headline of the Day -100:

President Primo de Rivera thinks subjugating Spanish Morocco, which Spain has been signally failing to do, is a waste of time because it will never pay off economically.

The ACLU places an ad in the Knoxville Journal calling for any Tennessee teacher to volunteer to be a test case of the new anti-evolution law.

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

Today -100: May 2, 1925: Of non-riots, tunnels, subversive opinion and unscrupulous propaganda, and circuses

Yesterday was May Day and, sadly, there were no proper riots anywhere.

Coolidge wants business to be “undisturbed” by the government during the congressional recess (until December), with no announcements or agitation. He’ll be leading his fellow politicians by example by taking a six-week vacation during which he will say and do nothing.

Bulgaria claims to have thwarted another attempt to assassinate Tsar Boris by tunneling under the royal palace and blowing it up, as you do.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill gives a speech complaining about “subversive opinion and unscrupulous propaganda” coming from outside the country (from you-know-where). He accuses the Labour Party, which he calls the Socialist Party, of “having needlessly and wantonly corrupted...” – that’s the worst kind of corrupting – “...large masses of the British nation” with doctrines that would “starve a large proportion of the population of this crowded island.”

Headline of the Day -100:

Al Smith and the freaks. But I repeat myself. No explanation is given for his failure to bring any girls. Aren’t they entitled to gape at the freaks as well?

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

Today -100: May 1, 1925: Of murderous vaccines, dole habits, bibles, and murder rates

14 people have died of a highly lethal strain of smallpox in D.C. since the start of the year. Government employees are being asked to get the vaccine. Pres. and Mrs. Coolidge are believed to have done so. So there are picketers outside government buildings with signs saying that hundreds have been “murdered by vaccines.”

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill continues to defend his budget in Parliament, making himself no friends on the Labour side by suggesting unions should discourage “the dole habit.”

Ohio Gov. Vic Donahey (D) vetoes the alliterative Buchanan Bible Bill, which is backed by the alliterative Ku Klux Klan and would have required mandatory daily Bible-reading (of at least 10 verses) in public schools and for 4th-graders to memorize the 10 Commandments. Donahey’s veto message mentions religious freedom and the US & Ohio constitutions, but points out that local school boards can just ignore that shit and mandate Bible-reading.

Field Marshal Hindenburg will take his presidential oath in civilian dress after all.

NYC Police Commissioner Richard Enright, responding to remarks by Harold Aron, chair of the Republican Publicity Committee, denies that the murder rate in the city has increased substantially since Mayor Hylan appointed him in 1918 and denounces people (Republicans) who claim the NYPD is inefficient, saying they’re greater foes to society than the criminals. He says there haven’t been 1,900 murders, there were only 1,747 (he doesn’t count accidental or justifiable homicides or infanticide). He blames the recent increase on the Tong War and bootlegger contretemps. He criticizes juries who acquit criminals because “their confessions under certain circumstances cannot be used against them”.

Don Okle resigns as an undercover federal Prohibition agent in San Francisco because his job entailed taking 50 drinks a day on average “to obtain evidence.”

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

Today -100: April 30, 1925: Of rich man’s budgets, plots, and smells

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill presents his budget to Parliament. His Labour predecessor in the job, Philip Snowden, calls it “the worst rich man’s budget ever presented.” It indeed drastically reduces income tax for the super-rich.

The British Foreign Office denies newspaper stories that there’s a “Red plot” to assassinate Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain.

Indiana’s new prohibition enforcement act admits as evidence cops’ claiming that they smelled liquor.

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