Today -100: July 23, 1925: This comedy cannot last longer

New York City Mayor John Hylan vehemently rejects the offer from fellow Democrats of a state Supreme Court seat in exchange for ending his re-election campaign, adding that he hasn’t actually received that offer from anyone with the power to get him on the court.

The appropriation bill for Washington D.C. includes a provision against paying the salary of any school superintendent who permits a teacher (who can’t be paid either) “who teaches disrespect for the Holy Bible,” which slipped through unnoticed. So Bureau of Internal Revenue employee Loren Wittner (not acting in his official capacity) files a petition under that provision because, you guessed it, evolution is being taught. One of the 11 counts of anti-Biblical teaching he cites (and it took me longer than I care to admit to realize this is a joke; I’m not sure whether the NYT has realized it) is that blood is required to keep human beings alive. Another is that rainbows are caused by natural reflection and refraction of light, instead of God reminding us of The Flood. Also, DC schools are teaching that the Earth isn’t flat and the law of gravity, which conflicts with the story of Elijah ascending to Heaven.

Italian anti-Fascist deputy Giovanni Amendola, who defined the concept of totalitarianism, was attacked by Blackshirts a few days ago, beaten with clubs. Fascist Party Secretary General Roberto Farinacci says he can’t “conscientiously deplore” the violence, saying “It is time anti-Fascists should know that this comedy cannot last longer. We cannot continue to tolerate provocations whereof we are the victims.” (Farinacci would later lose a hand fishing with a hand grenade, as you do. And he’ll be executed by partisans in 1945, which he probably conscientiously deplored.) Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia asks, if Fascismo is no longer supported by the majority of the Italian people, as Amendola has claimed, why did no one defend him from the attack? Anyway, although this article suggests he’s not too seriously injured, he will never recover and will die in April.

Race rioting in Pittsburgh, broken up by the police. The article doesn’t say how it started.

Will Hays is now telling motion picture companies what plays they can’t turn into movies, including Sidney Howard’s “They Knew What They Wanted,” which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize.

Headline of the Day -100:

William Jennings Bryan, who has opinions, says the best name for a girl is Mary and the best name for a boy is Paul.

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Today -100: July 22, 1925: He is our Exhibit A

The Scopes trial was supposed to resume today with a continuation of Clarence Darrow’s questioning of William Jennings Bryan, but Judge Raulston announces that it won’t and that Bryan’s testimony will be stricken from the record because it “can shed no light on any issues that will be pending before the higher courts.” Darrow admits that he’s not sure Bryan’s testimony would help the state Supreme Court “or any other human being,” but says he wasn’t done. Now Bryan won’t be able to get his heart’s desire to put Darrow on the stand to expose his “religious attitude” (or maybe Attorney General Tom Stewart vetoed the silly idea).

With that, Darrow says screw it and asks for a directed verdict of guilty. The jury duly convicts and Scopes is fined $100. Which he will never pay.

Bryan’s been working on his closing speech for 3 months, and now won’t be able to give it.

Outside the court, Bryan sends Darrow the questions he wanted to ask him on the stand, related to Jesus’s divinity, the immortality of the soul, etc. Darrow mostly responds with longer versions of “Dunno, I’m an agnostic, dude.” Bryan says the Scopes trial has proved that the Bible is true. Um, sure. He says the issue of whether the Bible is true “dwarfs all other issues now under consideration by the people of the United States and of the world.” Christians, he says, “are at last awakened to the insidious attacks which have been made, under cover of scientific hypothesis, upon the authority of the Bible by unbelievers of every grade and class. The attack upon the authority of the Bible is organized, deliberate and malignant, and had only to be uncovered to be understood.” Bryan calls Darrow “the finished product of evolution... he embodies all that is cruel, heartless and destructive in evolution. He is our Exhibit A.” 

Darrow, referring to Bryan’s statement as “rabies,” responds that Bryan is not a product of evolution, but a reversion to type.

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Today -100: July 21, 1925: What is the meaning of all this harangue?

At the Monkey Trial, Clarence Darrow surprises William Jennings Bryan by calling him to the stand as a witness for the defense as an alleged expert on Christianity and the Bible. Bryan being Bryan doesn’t object, but proves (partial transcript) unable to answer questions about where Cain’s wife came from (“I leave the agnostics to hunt for her”), the nature of Jonah’s whale, Adam’s rib, how old the Earth is, whether Chinese or Egyptian civilization is older than he thinks the Earth is, etc.  At one point Attorney General Tom Stewart tries to intercede, asking “What is the meaning of all this harangue?”, to which Darrow responds, “preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the educational system of the United States” (hey Linda McMahon, I think he’s talking about you). Bryan jumps up and yells, “To protect the word of God from the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.” He accuses Darrow of casting slurs on the Bible; Darrow says he’s just “showing up your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on Earth believes.”

Typical exchange: “Have you ever investigated to find out how long man has been on the earth?” “I have never found it necessary.”

Awesome exchange: “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” “Do you think about things you do think about?” “Well, sometimes.”

Bryan demonstrates that he is not only ignorant, even about the Bible, but profoundly uncurious.  But what will really damage his reputation among Fundamentalists is that he allows for non-literal readings, admitting that the 6 days in which God created shit were “Not six days of twenty-four hours” but could be millions of years.

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Today -100: July 20, 1925: These people are all right

John Scopes says the Fundamentalists also don’t like him because he smokes and (gasp) dances. He says the trial is defeating the purpose of the Butler Act by making people think about science and religion. “These people are all right. They’re intelligent, but hitherto uninformed.”

Former Vermont governor (1896-8) and possessor of The Most Vermont Governor Name Ever, Josiah Grout, dies at 84.

New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore Cotillo, head of the New York State branch of the Sons of Italy in America and son of the man who introduced spumoni to the US, accuses John (Giovanni) Di Silvestro of being a “tool of Mussolini” (Fact Check: Correct) and trying to subordinate the body to the Fascist Party in Italy (Fact Check: Correct). Not that Cotillo doesn’t love him some Duce too, he just thinks that Fascism shouldn’t be imported into the US and believes Italian immigrants in the US should assimilate. The Mussoliniists accuse Cotillo of being a Bolshevik, as is the custom. Di Silvestro will win this battle (which is also about who gets to steal the Sons’ pension fund), but the friendly dialogue over links with Italy will continue. For example, in 1933 a bomb will destroy Di Silvestro’s Philadelphia home, killing his wife and 4 of his children.

Failed coup attempt in Portugal.

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Today -100: July 19, 1925: Of konflicts, vaccines, and race in Staten Island

The Colorado Ku Klux Klan is in conflict with the national Klan, which is trying to force out its grand dragon. 40,000 kluxers have resigned and joined the Minute Men of America.

British doctor William Ewart Gye has developed a vaccine against the cancer, um, germ.

The Scopes trial is in recess for the weekend, so the duel of wits in Dayton is confined to written statements. William Jennings Bryan has found what he thinks is a devastating argument against evolution: Darwin was religious when he was young but died an agnostic, demonstrating the effects of the theory of evolution on the mind. Bryan thinks there’s been a major cover-up about this.

French and Belgian soldiers start leaving the Ruhr. The occupation should be over by the end of the month. They depart quietly in the early morning to avoid any sort of response by the locals, sarcastic applause or whatever.

80 young members of the Hakenkreuzler, an Austrian Nazi-adjacent group, invade a Viennese restaurant and attack the guests, yelling “Out with the Jews!” A hakenkreu, by the way, is a swastika, which is a word the Nazis never used and which won’t make its way into English for a few years.

A bunch of white men attack the home of Samuel Browne, a black mailman in Staten Island, the only black-owned house in the neighborhood. The Brownes have been offered substantial amounts to sell the house they bought last year and were “rude” when a “citizens’ committee” explained to them that property values in the neighborhood depended on its “exclusiveness.” The KKK will take credit for the attack, for whatever that’s worth. There have been numerous acts of vandalism, letters threatening that Mrs. Browne will be shot on her way home from the school where she teaches by an ex-serviceman (unnamed), and an attempt to get the Brownes’ fire insurance cancelled. There will be indictments and a lawsuit, which will not come to much of anything. (Update: oo, there’s a blog post on all this). Browne will soon start the first Staten Island NAACP chapter. According to their grandson, they lived in that house until they died in the early 1970s.

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Today -100: July 18, 1925: Evidence

Scopes trial judge John Raulston rules out expert testimony on evolution, saying the only question is whether Scopes taught evolution. He offers to let the defense put on their witnesses out of the presence of the jury and have them be cross-examined by the prosecution, solely to make a record for the inevitable appeal. That’s just not a thing that courts do, and the defense refuses to take the bait. They will, however, put in affidavits of what they’d hoped to demonstrate, for the upper courts. Bryan is pissed that this will eliminate his ability to cross-examine or rebut. The judge points out that it was the prosecution’s position that none of the evidence about evolution was relevant and he had ruled in their favor, so shut up.

The first part of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is published.

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Today -100: July 17, 1925: The truth does not need Mr. Bryan

Walter White (ahem), the superintendent of schools of Rhea County, Tennessee, which contains Dayton, proposes a Fundamentalist college to be named Bryan University. Fund-raising has begun. (William Jennings Bryan University will be founded in 1930; now called Bryan College, it’s still around).

At the Scopes trial, much of the day is spent on arguments over whether scientists should be allowed to testify, but the arguments aren’t exactly focused on the law:

Attorney General Tom Stewart: “Would they have me believe that I was once a worm and writhed in the dust? Will they take from me my hope of a hereafter?”

Dudley Field Malone: “Are preachers the only ones in the country who care about our youth? Are churches the only teachers of morality?”

William Jennings Bryan, describing yesterday’s testimony by zoologist Maynard Metcalf: “Did he tell you where life began? Did he tell you that back of all that was God?” The Commoner says evolution isn’t even a theory, it’s a hypothesis. That puts you in your place, evolution! And, he says, evolution eliminates the Virgin Birth and gives us Nietzsche.

Malone, again, responding to Bryan’s statement that this was a duel to the death: “There is never a duel with the truth. The truth always wins. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan.”

H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “His own speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility. Its climax came when he launched into a furious denunciation of the doctrine that man is a mammal.”

Daytonihoovians, by the way, have finally found out what Mencken’s been writing about them: Babbitts, morons, peasants, hillbillies, yokels, etc. Sounds like there are meetings on every street corner on driving him out of town or beating him up.

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Today -100: July 16, 1925: It is a tragedy to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon

At the Scopes trial, Dudley Field Malone denies that the theory of evolution conflicts with the Bible. 

Since only one member of the Scopes jury admits to having read anything about evolution ever, Clarence Darrow suggests they should be allowed to hear about what evolution is before they decide whether the thing that John Scopes taught was evolution. So he calls zoologist (and Christian) Prof. Maynard Metcalf. After objections, Judge Raulston hears from the prof in the absence of the jury (who are told to stay away from the loudspeakers outside the courthouse). At his assertion that life on Earth began at least 600 million years ago, “There was an incredulous laugh among the spectators in court.”

Attorney General Tom Stewart feels the need to counteract whatever effect the reading from a (state-mandated) biology textbook had by reading the Book of Genesis to a bored jury. A 14-year-old student is asked what Scopes taught and gave a 14-year-old student answer, after which Darrow asks, “It hasn’t hurt you any, has it?” “No.”

H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “This old buzzard, having failed to raise the mob against its rulers, now prepares to raise it against its teachers. He can never be the peasants’ President, but there is still a chance to be the peasants’ Pope. ... One somehow pities him, despite his so palpable imbecilities. It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.”

Women in Detroit will be allowed to smoke in street cars.

The sheriff of Frederick County, Maryland carries out a sentence of 10 lashes for a convicted wife-beater, the first judicial whipping for years. That is, the first judicial whipping of a white man.

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Today -100: July 15, 1925: This is a god-fearing country

The Scopes defense team objects again to the prayers opening the trial. Judge Raulston says he’ll leave the choice of preachers up to the local Pastors’ Association. It’s pointed out that that group consists entirely of Fundamentalists. Attorney General Tom Stewart “advises” – his word – Dudley Field Malone “this is a god-fearing country.” And that’s all the business the court seems to have conducted today.

William Jennings Bryan writes to the NYT to deny reports that he advocates putting religion in the Constitution. 

Sen. Coleman Blease of South Carolina wants SC to go beyond a proposed anti-evolution law and require all teachers to declare their support for the divinity of that Jesus guy.

Gloria Swanson denies having had a face-lift. She had a sunburn, she says.

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Today -100: July 14, 1925: Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding

Clarence Darrow (after objecting to the prayer at the opening of the court) “thunders” his first speech (transcript) of the Scopes Monkey Trial, an argument to quash the indictment. Like pretty much all the big moments that will come in this trial, the jury isn’t present. “This is as brazen and bold an attempt to destroy liberty as was ever seen in the Middle Ages,” he says of the Butler Act, “Of all the strange, weird, impossible and medieval things, of all the combinations of bigotry and ignorance brought together to make this statute, I can’t conceive of anything greater.”  “Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always they are feeding and gloating for more. Today, it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.” Darrow is on a roll.

H. L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun, says Darrow’s speech “was not designed for reading, but for hearing. The clanging of it was as important as the logic. It rose like a wind and ended like a flourish of bugles.” Still, Mencken says, Bryan has the local people behind him: “These are his people. They understand him when he speaks in tongues.” Mencken is on a roll.

Standard Oil of New Jersey adopts an 8-hour day on its oil fields, down from 12, evidently John D. Rockefeller’s initiative. They will be paid something like 20% less for the shorter day’s work.

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Today -100: July 13, 1925: The breakdown of the reasoning powers

Tennessee hill folk (“queer fish,” the NYT calls them) flock into Dayton from all over the state to listen to William Jennings Bryan as he teaches Sunday school and gives an outdoor speech. He says “It is possible to carry education so far that a person will look down upon religion as a superstition.”

H. L. Mencken, who definitely looks down on religion as superstition, writes in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “It is the four Methodists on the jury who are expected to hold out for giving Scopes Christian burial after he is hanged.” But back to the NYT: “No one can yet measure the impulse and encouragement to erratic thinking which the Dayton trial is giving. It is a sort of notice, posted up so that the whole nation can read it, of the breakdown of the reasoning powers.”

Assistant Treasury Secretary (and former army general) Lincoln Andrews, the dude in charge of the federal Prohibition effort, is reorganizing that system into 22 regions, disregarding state lines. This means 22 administrators to be hired, and Republicans are determined to see 22 patronage appointments. The NYT seems to think Coolidge & Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon will back up Andrews against these pressures.

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Today -100: July 12, 1925: Foreign scientists should be barred from Dayton

NYC Mayor John Hylan denies that it’s New York garbage washing up on NJ beaches, says it’s garbage dumped by ships.

On Monday (this is Saturday), the Scopes trial will take up the question of whether scientists may testify about the theory of evolution. The state of Tennessee says the Butler Act plainly forbids the teaching of evolution, so what’s the point? But the poorly written act bans the teaching of “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The defense says these are two distinct things, so evidence is required to prove that teaching evolution does not necessarily deny religion. William Jennings Bryan, who resides in Florida, trumpets, “Foreign scientists should be barred from Dayton.” Clarence Darrow accuses the prosecution of “a plain effort to run away from the facts, and is doubtless on account of their inability to get any scientific man in the world to deny the facts that prove the correctness of evolution.” He also notes that “Science is the same everywhere.” “We have no doubt that some scientists will be called from Tennessee, as the statute is so recent that there are some scientists left here.”

John Scopes says he won’t be returning to teaching in Dayton. “It wouldn’t be pleasant.”

The Metric Association, meeting in Lake Placid, passes a resolution asking Tennessee to ban the metric system, which they snarkily suggest would be a boost to their attempt to get it adopted.

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Today -100: July 11, 1925: Cranks and freaks

Headline of the Day -100:

Yup, the Scopes Monkey Trial is in full swing.

It starts with a 15-minute prayer, because of course it does. The jury has been chosen. It includes 9 or 10 farmers, a shipping clerk, and, of all things, a teacher. No women. One is illiterate (Darrow tells him, “Well, you are fortunate”), 3 say the only book they read is the Bible, none believe in the theory of evolution. Attorney General Tom Stewart objects when Clarence Darrow tries to exclude with cause evolution-denies, saying if he were allowed to do so then the state could exclude evolution-believers. Darrow responds, “If you can find any one around here who believes in evolution you are welcome to challenge him.” He does get excluded a Fundamentalist “minister of the mountains” who has preached against evolution.

H. L. Mencken, describing Dayton, Tennessee in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “To call a man a doubter in these parts is equal to accusing him of cannibalism”. While he spies an “air of a religious orgy” in Dayton (religious orgies are the worst kind of orgy), he did point out a couple of days ago the absence of the Klan in Dayton. Today he adds, “If it has any bootleggers, no visitor has heard of them” and “No fancy woman has been seen in the town since the end of the McKinley administration.”

Headline of the Day -100:

A coup, which must indeed be pretty upsetting.

Acting Secretary of War Dwight Davis tells New York City to stop dumping its garbage in the ocean. New Jersey was complaining about all the whatever washing up on its beaches.

Kinky Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: July 10, 1925: Dayton decorates

The head of Coolidge’s Secret Service detail valiantly alerts him to the presence of an open elevator shaft at Fort Andrews by falling into it himself, sustaining minor injuries, allowing Coolidge to leap back instead of also falling into it. Fort Andrews is a bit of a mess, which is why Coolidge wanted to inspect it.

In Dayton, Tennessee, they’re cleaning up the courthouse, putting a big ol’ “Read your Bible” sign on it, and putting up bandstands for the Circus Trial of the Century. Judge Raulston has announced that due to the heat he will allow men to take off their coats. In the town, if one is tired of listening to many assembled religious fanatics orate and longs for the silence of the cinema, one can see “The She Devil,” which is presumably the 1918 Theda Bara film; if it isn’t already clear, Dayton is a little behind the times.

A NYT op-ed denies that William Jennings Bryan is using this trial as a springboard for yet another presidential run. “All he asks is that the world recognize him as the greatest moral statesman of his time. And if the world doesn’t do it, he will talk it blue in the face.”

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Today -100: July 9, 1925: William Jennings Bryan likes potatoes

William Jennings Bryan says if he loses the Monkey Trial, he will campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban the teaching of evolution. Evidently he’s been working on his closing speech for two months and, the NYT predicts, “It will undoubtedly be his greatest oratorical effort since his famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech”. And boy will Bryan be pissed off when he isn’t allowed to give that closing speech.

Dayton, Tenn. is a small town. So just as John Scopes’s father is in a drugstore explaining that he dislikes Bryan because Bryan is too well-read to believe the shit he’s spouting, why there the Commoner is in the next aisle. John then politely introduces Bryan to his father and they shake hands.

Scopes expresses astonishment at Bryan’s nutritional ignorance: Bryan claims to be on a diet and to have has given up white bread because of the starch but chows down on potatoes.

Former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby was supposed to be one of Scopes’s lawyers, but the overturning of Home Rule in New York City, whose attorney he is, will keep him too busy to come to Tennessee.

John Hylan says he’ll run for a third term as mayor of New York City even if Tammany Hall doesn’t nominate him, so presumably running as an independent.

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Today -100: July 8, 1925: A duel to the death

William Jennings Bryan arrives in Dayton, Tennessee. He says “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death. ... the two cannot stand together.”

The Washington D.C. commissioner of public buildings and parks, who issued the permit for the big Ku Klux Klan parade next month, refuses one for an anti-Klan meeting because it would be “political.”

The English Lord Chamberlain bans Ernest Vajda’s play “The Harem,” which recently finished a 183-performance run on Broadway, because “the plot is objectionable, the dialogue nasty, and the whole atmosphere salacious.” Sounds cool.

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Today -100: July 7, 1925: Of rum-runners, home rule, skyscrapers, and excessive laws

Pres. Coolidge, annoyed at watching rum-running ships visible from his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts, orders the Coast Guard to put a stop to it. The rum-runners’ cache was stored in the very next cottage. The Swampscott police chief was recently arrested under the Volstead Act.

The appellate division of the NY Supreme Court rules that the change in the state Constitution granting home rule to NYC was not legally adopted, the 1920 and 1922 Legislatures having passed different versions of the constitutional amendment. So a bunch of laws passed under home rule are null and void, including pay raises, the city running buses and setting routes, police licensing of taxi cabs, etc.

House of Representatives Chaplain James Montgomery says there are too many laws, which just confuses the average citizen. What we really need in terms of laws is the suppression of seditious publications, heathen churches, and undesirable immigration.

The Tribune Tower opens in Chicago. I do love a skyscraper with buttresses.

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Today -100: July 6, 1925: Princey goes bang bang

In Rhodesia, Edward, Prince of Wales shoots the largest blue wildebeest ever shot there, because he’s a dick.

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Today -100: July 5, 1925: Of birthday harmonicae

Pres. Coolidge is visited in his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts by a local boy on his 13th birthday and Coolidge’s 53rd (yes, the 4th of July, the only president born on that date, if you’re looking for a bit of trivia with which to delight your friends and confound your enemies). He is turned away, but his note and a gift of chocolates are sent in and Cal sends a car to bring him back to White Court, where they give him some of the president’s birthday cake (made by the former pastry chef of King Albert) and a harmonica.

At a Garibaldi fête in NYC, anti-Fascist red shirts and Fascist black shirts have a little brawl after the Fascisti attack an actual 82-year-old veteran of the Garibaldi movement as he walks to the offices of the radical newspaper Martello on East Fourteen Street, which takes him past Fascist hq; the two buildings are so close to each other I’m surprised this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time.

July the Fourth was Defense Day. 8 million Americans either take part in a little parade or enroll themselves for military service in the event of a national emergency. Gen. Pershing and VP Dawes have a phone conversation which is broadcast over the radio.  One person not so ready for a national emergency: Secretary of War John Weeks, who hasn’t exactly announced that he’s resigning due to ill health, but has sold his D.C. home.

Some interesting info about the film biz in the Daily Mail (London) from an English owner of 24 cinemas in France, who says that after trying to fill up a weekly program of 90 minutes (the normal length in Britain is 150 minutes), he runs out of French films, few of which are made because the French market is so small (1,500 cinemas, 1/10th the number of the US) and French films just don’t sell in the US, which doesn’t like them any more than the French like American films, but since he needs to fill that 90 minutes the French audiences can watch American films and lump it (British audiences, on the other hand, love American films).

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Today -100: July 4, 1925: Of eccentric music and safety first

John Scopes’s lawyers, or at least Clarence Darrow, plan to get his trial transferred to federal court in Chattanooga or Knoxville, considering that the circus atmosphere in Dayton would be a problem and that the constitutionality of the anti-evolution law needs to be adjudicated pronto, before other states pass their own versions.

The Dayton school superintendent has evidently asked the evangelist Billy Sunday to assist the prosecution. AP reached Sunday’s wife, who says he won’t do it.

A man dies of blood poisoning in Niagara Falls after a “Safety First” sign falls on him.

Headline of the Day -100:

59.

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Today -100: July 3, 1925: But what about gorilla gods?

Black groups protest to Pres. Coolidge over the march in D.C. the Ku Klux Klan plans for August 8th, suggesting it might lead to a race riot. Catholic and Jewish groups also object.

Alfred W. McCann, author of the error-filled anti-evolution book God — or Gorilla? (1922), declines William Jennings Bryan’s invitation to testify at the Scopes trial  because he believes in free speech.

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Today -100: July 2, 1925: Of Scopeses, charters, red archduchesses, and deposed archbishops

Lela Scopes, 28, sister of John Scopes is fired/not hired as a teacher in Paducah, Kentucky (she’d taken some time off to take college classes) after refuses a demand to denounce evolution, in case it affects her teaching of math, I guess. She’ll be offered a job in Winnetka, where she’ll teach for 30 years.

The Kansas Charter Board denies the Ku Klux Klan a charter, saying it lied in its application when it said the Klan does benevolent and charitable work.

Former archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria, granddaughter of penultimate Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf of Mayerling suicide pact fame (when she was 5), is “engaged” (the headline says “wed”) to Social Democratic deputy Leopold Petznek, despite still being married to, though legally separated from former Prince Otto Windischgrätz, whose actress mistress Elisabeth shot to death back in the day because the Habsburgs were just like that. Otto didn’t even want to marry her, but she got the hots for him and had Granddad-Emperor order him to drop the countess he was engaged to and marry Erzsi instead, which he did in 1902. She won’t actually be able to divorce Otto and marry Petznek, who will spend some time in Dachau, until 1948. Honestly, there’s so many more salacious details that I don’t have room for. It shocks me that there’s never been a biopic and the only biography of her hasn’t been translated into English.

NYPD cops (from the Bomb Squad for some reason) force entry into Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas after the NY Supreme Court deposes the archbishop, Platon Rozhdestvensky, in favor of Archbishop Adam Phillipovsky, which wasn’t a power I knew the New York courts had.

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Today -100: July 1, 1925: Of widow-reps, replenished Jessicas, German aviation, and foreign anti-Semitism

Edith Nourse Rogers, widow of Rep. John Jacob Rogers (R-Mass.), who died in March, wins a special election to replace him, beating former governor Eugene Foss, who ran as a “Coolidge Democrat,” whatever that might mean. She wins 70% of the votes. She’s the 6th woman elected to Congress, the first from New England, and she’ll remain in office until her death in 1960 at 79.

2 employees of publishing company Boni & Liveright are indicted for publishing Replenishing Jessica, by bohemian Greenwich Village author Maxwell Bodenheim, who later wrote Naked on Roller Skates (1930). Evidently the book is “salacious.” We’ll see if anything comes of this, but I’m kind of intrigued by the book’s title.

The Council of Ambassadors impose new restrictions on German aviation. They allow themselves to ban any German aircraft that might possibly be converted for military use, restrict the size of zeppelins, and bar Germans from international airplane races. They are also demanding a list of all planes, motors, spare parts, and pilots in training. Germans correctly think this is all aimed at restricting competition from German commercial planes, which is not a legitimate part of the Versailles Treaty.

The Bulgarian minister of war orders garrison commanders to crush anti-Semitism, which he says is foreign to Bulgaria.

It is not.

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Today -100: June 30, 1925: Earthquake

6.something magnitude earthquakes destroy much of Santa Barbara, killing 13.

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Today -100: June 29, 1925: Of kids, rubber, and erroneous assumptions

The NYT announces the birth of a son to Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey, Charles Spencer Chaplin III, the 2nd of his 11 children by 3 wives (the first died shortly after birth). I’m guessing the reason III’s birthday is announced as having just happened instead of the real date, May 5, is to disguise how young Lita was when impregnated, i.e. below the age of legal consent. III acted a little under the screen name Charles Jr. in such classics as Sex Kittens Go to College (1960),

which also featured Harold Lloyd Jr and “The Kid” co-star Jackie Coogan. I have not had the pleasure.

Kinky Headline of the Day -100:

H. L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone – that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous.”

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Today -100: June 28, 1925: Of sterilizations, seasonal indictments, and operas without pachyderms

Wisconsin Gov. John Blaine vetoes a bill allowing the Board of Control to sterilize the mentally ill before their release from state institutions. Not because it would be, you know, wrong, but because it would make families hesitate before institutionalizing family members and because patients’ knowledge of their impending sterilization might interfere with therapy. Also, people & families rich enough to afford private hospitals would escape sterilization.

Sen. Burton Wheeler accuses the RNC’s agent Blair Coan of trying to influence witnesses in the trumped-up case against Wheeler with women and liquor. Wheeler says “I am becoming so accustomed to being indicted by the Department of Justice that my only hope is that in the future they will indict me in the North in the Summertime and in California or Florida in the Winter.”

The massive staging of Aida at Yankee Stadium is less massive than planned, after it was realized that the stage might not be able to support elephants. There are camels, though. The audience consists of 20,000 people, meaning there are 20,000 people who want to see an opera.

The Polish government negotiated with the reps of the Jewish community to remove some laws, such as restrictions on licenses to Jews to trade and quotas for higher education, the army and civil service, and to allow 2 hours of trading on Sunday. In return, Jewish parliamentary deputies will end opposition to the government and tell foreigners that everything’s okay now.

The Italian Senate, acting as the High Court of Justice, exonerates Gen. Emilio De Bono for his role in the assassination of Deputy Giacomo Matteotti a year ago.

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Today -100: June 27, 1925: Of coups

Greek coup leader Gen. Theodoros Pangalos forces provisional president Adm. Pavlos Kountouriotis to name him prime minister and war minister.

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Today -100: June 26, 1925: Why indeed

After the London Times criticizes Mussolini’s Fascist regime, he writes a letter to the Times, as one does, demanding they “rectify” their silly claim that he has attacked basic constitutional liberties. He asserts that the opposition is a “small, dispossessed group” and the Fascists constitute the majority bigly. The Times asks, if that is so, “why is it necessary to gag the press, forbid free speech, forbid public meetings and arm the executive with arbitrary and irresponsible powers?”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos overthrows the Greek government. It’s described as a bloodless coup, if only because the Cabinet resigns after Pangalos threatens to bombard the Presidential Palace and the War Office. “The populace seems strangely unmoved by the event, and is evidently becoming accustomed to such coups, which have been increasingly frequent in recent years.”

The vice president of the United States Radium Corporation of Orange, NJ denies that it will close just because its female factory workers are getting radium poisoning making luminous radioactive paints for watches. Those workers are just on their summer vacations, he says.

Chaplin’s The Gold Rush premieres.

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Today -100: June 25, 1925: Of secessions and considerations

The Chicago City Council unanimously passes a proposal to ask the corporate counsel how the city can secede from Illinois. It says the Legislature is failing to follow the state constitution by not having reapportioned after the 1920 census, which would have given Cook County 5 more state senators and 15 more representatives.

The Ku Klux Klan asks Coolidge to review its August 8 parade in D.C., even though they know damned well he has no plans to be anywhere near the White House until September. A press statement which the Times doesn’t seem entirely convinced comes from the Klan suggests it deserves “the same consideration” from Coolidge as the (Catholic) Holy Name Society procession last year.

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Today -100: June 24, 1925: Of monkey glands, gun control, and ruining hospitals

As I briefly mentioned, China is a bit of a mess at the moment. Anyhoo, British and French marines in Canton fire machine guns at demonstrators.

Dr. Maurice Lebon of France wants large-scale breeding of monkeys, because monkeys are fun. No, wait, it’s because monkey glands can be used to “rejuvenate” humans.

A committee on gun sales appointed by NYC Mayor John Hylan endorses proposals before Congress to ban the sale of guns through the mails, to put a high sales tax on guns, and to ban toy pistols.

NYT Index Slip of the Tongue of the Day -100:

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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.”

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

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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.”

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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.

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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!”

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