Today -100: August 15, 1925: Of public praying and traffic lanes

Headline of the Day -100:

Striking (or locked-out) coal miners in Henryetta, Oklahoma, who had been ordered by the sheriff to stop praying near scabs, presumably intending to intimidate them. The ACLU is looking into it.

A letter to the Times suggests reducing traffic accidents by marking out lanes in the larger roads.

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Today -100: August 14, 1925: Of private citizens and divorces

New York Democratic Gov. Al Smith will fight to defeat New York City Democratic Mayor John Hylan by speechifying in favor of fellow Tammanyist Jimmy Walker, although he will do so as a private citizen rather than as governor, whatever that means.

Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk divorces his wife of 2½ years, Latife Hanoum. No legal procedure, just a decree, which he issues as a president rather than as a private citizen. The Western-educated (Paris & London) Latife is just too feminist for him. Or he was too much of a dick for her; neither of them ever spoke publicly about the divorce.

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Today -100: August 13, 1925: Of highly civilized nations and petting parties

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann says that when Germany enters the League of Nations, it will insist on getting back some of its former colonies now ruled as League “mandates” by Britain, France, etc. He refers to the “right of Germany to have colonies,” asserting that “as long as the League distributed colonies on the principle that the highly civilized nations had the right to control the less progressive peoples, Germany demanded the right to be counted among the civilized nations.”

The University of California, Berkeley informs incoming women freshmen against frivolities such as wearing too much rouge and lipstick, returning from dances after 1 a.m., smoking, drinking, petting parties, etc.

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Today -100: August 12, 1925: Of the occult, klux fights, and dewws alCWA

Austria bans societies engaged in the study of the occult (spiritualism, if I’m reading this correctly).

16 KKKers are charged with assault with dangerous weapons in Framingham, Massachusetts after a clash with anti-kluxers at a Klan meeting.

Former slave Eliza Hicks dies at 100. She leaves (deep breath) 7 living children out of 14, 80 grandchildren, 134 great-grandchildren, and 8 great-great-grandchildren.

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Today -100: August 11, 1925: Of tickets

The three tickets for New York City offices – mayor, controller, president of the Board of Alderman – are chosen, with the Democratic ticket headed by John Hylan, a Tammany Democratic ticket headed by Jimmy Walker, and a Republican one headed by... well, it hardly matters, does it? He’s some dude in the fountain pen business.

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Today -100: August 10, 1925: The day of oratory is past

William Butler Yates says “The day of oratory is past, not only in Ireland but everywhere in the modern world.” He says that in the absence of decent speech-making, it will be the job of the Abbey Theatre (Dublin) to teach clarity of expression.

William Green, president of the AFL, warns black union members not to attend the American Negro Labor Congress organized by the (Communist) Workers’ Party: “It will not be held to benefit the race but to instill into the lives of that race the most pernicious doctrine – race hatred.”

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Today -100: August 9, 1925: Of marching kluxers and huge gorillas, but I repeat myself

35-40,000 Klansman from all over... well, from the North-East, mostly, march through Washington D.C. (the parade had a permit, it’s not a March on Rome thing) from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. They do not wear masks, in compliance with a D.C. ordinance. Many do hold their arms out in evident imitation of the Italian Fascist “Roman salute.” It rains at the end, so no giant-cross burning.

Some British Pathé footage of the parade.

By the way, after William Jennings Bryan’s death, some Klan chapters celebrated him, under the impression he was a member.

British Air Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare will fly over the North Sea in one of the secret flying boats being developed.

The NYT likes the Tod Browning / Lon Chaney film “The Unholy Three”: “Think of having such a combination as a midget, a strong man and a ventriloquist! ... There is also a huge gorilla that figures in this picture, and even the way in which this animal is employed makes a wonderful cog in the story.” Rewatching it recently I was surprised how good Mae Busch was; I mostly remember her from her multiple roles as the one-note wife of Oliver Hardy, was. The “midget” who disguised himself as an infant was Harry Earles, 22 or 23, who was also in the sound remake, “Freaks,” and “the Wizard of Oz,” but mostly worked in circuses with his 3 diminutive siblings.

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Today -100: August 8, 1925: Of beebs, right arms, and lynchings

Rudyard Kipling joins a committee of inquiry into the future of British radio broadcasting after the British Broadcasting Company’s monopoly expires next year. Does that strike anyone else as incongruous? He’s only 59, but wireless just feels a bit futuristic for him. The article doesn’t say how many people are on the committee, but it includes just one (1) woman, Meriel Talbot, former director of the Women’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Jimmy Walker cuts the legs out from under NYC Mayor John Hylan’s main issue, saying he (Walker) has fought for the 5¢ fare for years and “would rather cut off his right arm” than increase it.

Former Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando resigns from the Chamber of Deputies, in protest at the Fascist tactics during the Palermo elections.

A mob of 1,000 people lynch a black man in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. The lynching could be seen from a train.

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Today -100: August 7, 1925: Slow news day

Mayor Lawrence Quigley of Chelsea, Massachusetts is arrested, along with 43 others, for conspiracy to violate Prohibition.

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Today -100: August 6, 1925: Of traffic peerages, walkers, and cities wicked and reckless of life

Tammany Hall decides to run State Sen. Jimmy Walker against John Hylan in the Dem. mayoral primary. Now if they can just keep him out of the speakeasies. Gov. Al Smith has been quiet on the intramural squabble thus far, although it’s no secret that he haaaaates Hylan.

A few days after the Grand Jury said it would question NYPD Commissioner Richard Enright on the “PD” signs he’s been handing out for display in the cars of a “traffic peerage” of prominent people who are not members of the PD, making them immune to traffic-law enforcement, the police, following Mayor Hylan’s order, ask for the signs to be returned.

A mere 60 years after Elizabeth Garrett became the first woman given a licence to practice medicine in Britain through a loophole that allowed her to join the Society of Apothecaries, the Royal College of Surgeons will admit women, with voting rights and everything.

Chicago Mayor William Dever asks Chicagohoovians to help dispel the “apparently general impression that our city is wicked and reckless of life.” For example, the newspapers reported that there have been 227 murders this year, when there were actually only 112, not counting all the times cops shot alleged criminals. I don’t think that’s as reassuring as he thinks it is.

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Today -100: August 5, 1925: They are waiting, and so am I

NYC Mayor John Hylan is urged by his biggest fan, Henry Fruhauf of the Hylan Five-Cent Fare Club, to remain in the mayoral race even if he loses the Democratic primary, since politicians can control the primary but not the general election, and yes I’m mostly reporting this for the name of that “club.” Hylan really has no other issue than the 5¢ thing (that said, as I write this, before the 2025 mayoral primaries, Zohran Mamdani is campaigning on making the buses free, just like the Staten Island ferry, but he does have other issues).

Ex-kaiser Wilhelm tells a Budapest newspaper, “The so-called democracy of today means death to the nation. It is an inadequate form of government, and the people within their hearts prefer the monarchy, or one-man rule. I trust in the character and fidelity of the German people. They are waiting, and so am I.”

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Today -100: August 4, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

Greece is threatening war against Bulgaria. Ahead of a scheduled mutual ethnic cleansing in October, Greeks in Bulgaria are being killed, Greece says, in order to force Greeks to flee so their property can be grabbed.

US marines end their 13-year occupation of Nicaragua, except for 4 who desert to stay with their Nicaraguan wives.

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Today -100: August 3, 1925: Of concentration camps and anniversaries

Those ethnic Germans deported from Poland are currently quartered in the decrepit Schneidemühl concentration camp. It was a World War I prisoner of war camp, but I was a bit startled to see “concentration camp,” a term I thought hadn’t yet migrated to German from English, where it was coined for the Boer War.

Coolidge has been president for two years.

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Today -100: August 2, 1925: The word “undesirable” was just sitting there

Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” is banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain, who calls it “abhorrent.”

Count Antonio Cippico, Italian Fascist senator and Italian delegate to the League of Nations, says Fascism is “remolding the national soul of the Italians by severe discipline.” He says Italy’s territory is “insufficient to support her people,” so it requires either new colonies (its “share” of Germany’s former colonies) or for its emigrants need to live in other countries as groups and without losing their Italian citizenship.

Spain has its first ever divorce, that of the Baron and Baroness de Valasco.

There are something like 100,000 refrigerators in homes in the US.

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Today -100: August 1, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

The expulsion of Poles from Germany and Germans from Poland is happening. The Poles are mostly miners who lived in the Ruhr and have been sent to Silesia, which already has all miners it needs. The ethnic Germans are mostly farmers who lived in German Poland for generations and don’t speak German.

The French occupation of the Ruhr ends after 2½ years. German airplanes will again be allowed to fly over the Ruhr, and Ruhrihoovians will be allowed to own radios.

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Today -100: July 31, 1925: Putting industry on its feet

Intervention by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin may have postponed an imminent coal strike, with the 13% wage reductions the owners are trying to impose (or longer hours for the same wages, they’d be happy with that too) also being postponed, pending a 9-month government inquiry into coal industry efficiency and shit (the inquiry will side with the owners over wages and hours and seems to have been a delaying action so the owners could prepare for a fight). Baldwin, we are told, “labored so manfully that... he was forced to content himself with a hurried midday snack instead of a leisurely lunch”. Baldwin says (not quoted by the NYT), “All the workers in this country have got to take reductions in wages to help put industry on its feet.”

In Taizhou, Zhejiang province, China, the top general is asked to do a rain ceremony involving a kowtow to a frog. He says he’ll do it later at the temple, the crowd refuses to leave until he does it, a riot ensues in which the poor frog is trampled, and soldiers fire into the crowd, killing 8.

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Today -100: July 30, 1925: Of quacks and evolution

Sigmund Freud will head an international psychoanalytical foundation, aimed in part at stopping “the practice of psychoanalysis by quacks.” Insert your own joke here.

The lower house of the Georgia Legislature rejects a measure to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools.

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Today -100: July 29, 1925: Simple folk

Sub-Hed of the Day -100:

William Jennings Bryan’s body on display in Dayton, land of the simple folk.

The text of his undelivered closing speech from the Monkey Trial is released.

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Today -100: July 28, 1925: Of widows and dried-up friendly sources

Isabelle La Follette, widow of Fightin’ Bob, declines to stand for his vacant Senate seat. Fightin’ Bob Jr. probably will run.

The Italian Foreign Office asks the US ambassador to facilitate the expulsion from Italy of Chicago Tribune reporter George Seldes for writing bad things about Mussolini, including that he was involved in the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. This will be the second country to deport him, after Russia. The Trib protests that censorship of its correspondents will result in it having to get its Italian news from the opposition, “the friendly sources being all dried up.” 

According to his 1987 memoirs Witness to a Century, the train taking Seldes to France (involuntarily) was stopped at the border and a Blackshirt squad entered to beat him up/kill him. He found a compartment with some British admirals who confronted the Blackshirts and saved him.

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Today -100: July 27, 1925: Commoner as dirt

William Jennings Bryan, 65, dies in his sleep in Dayton, napping after church. He’s been making soooo many speeches since the end of the trial, in the hot Tennessee sun. In fact, he was scheduled to finally deliver the closing speech that he was precluded from giving during the trial. Bryan was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1896, 1900 and 1908, losing to McKinley twice and Taft once, his share of the popular vote declining with each election. He was secretary of state under Wilson and more recently promoted real estate in Florida.

Clarence Darrow expresses sorrow, saying he’d supported Bryan for president – twice.

H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up – to lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle as a comedy.”

German nationalists will put on Aryan plays, whatever that means, with Aryan actors.

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Today -100: July 26, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings, geniuses in the air, and... there are odors in New York?

Poland will force out the 15,000 ethnic Germans who voted for German citizenship in the plebiscite in Upper Silesia in 1921 (no secret ballot, I guess), with 20,000 more to come. Germany retaliates against Poles living in Germany who voted for Poland (10,000). Warsaw bans German-language plays. (Update: it’s not actually based on voting in the plebiscite; it’s Germans who retained their German nationality after the plebiscite).

Albert Einstein takes his first plane ride. 

Headline of the Day -100:

Rude.

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Today -100: July 25, 1925: Make good?

Count Antonio Cippico, an Italian Fascist senator and Italian delegate to the League of Nations, lectures at the Institute of Politics, defending the “cruel necessity” of war. I mean, a nation might need to do war to “remedy the defects of its geographical, political or economic situation in the world or to make good its own civilization as opposed to the inferior civilization of other people.”

William Jennings Bryan writes a letter to the NYT saying Clarence Darrow’s accusation that he is an ignoramus unfairly took advantage of the fact that he doesn’t know shit about shit.

The California Board of Education disappoints Fundamentalists by accepting biology textbooks that include the e-word.

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Today -100: July 24, 1925: Of dead PMs

Earlier this month, Russia executed Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, 75, the last prime minister before the February Revolution, for alleged monarchist counter-revolutionary activity.

Golitsyn will be “rehabilitated” in 2004.

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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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