Today -100: October 8, 1925: Fascisti frenzies are the worst kind of frenzie

Headline of the Day -100:

Exchange students, presumably.

Headline of the Day -100:

Also suppressing town councils in towns under 5,000, transferring their powers to appointed commissioners and councils appointed by business and land barons. Labor disputes will be “settled” by government-appointed labor magistrates, with strikes made illegal once they become involved.

Inappropriately Alliterative Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: October 7, 1925: Of intellectual demobilization, non-vanity, vodka, and tennis

Speaking to the American Legion convention, Pres. Coolidge calls for tolerance in vague terms which are taken as attacking the Ku Klux Klan, which he fails to name. Honestly, it doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly impressive speech, but he’ll get a lot of praise for it. He says it’s natural for intolerance of difference was inevitable during the war, “but when need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as military demobilization.”

The United States Lawn Tennis Association lifts the wartime ban on Germans playing in American tournaments.

Col. Billy Mitchell, formerly of the Army Air Service, defies Coolidge’s order that members of the military not try to affect public opinion on military matters by sending a telegram to the American Legion convention calling for a Department of National Defense with sub-depts for the army, navy, and an air force. Interesting to see “Defense” instead of “War.” Wonder when the push for that change began. Incidentally, the National Military Establishment (NME), created in 1947, became the Department of Defense in 1949 because too many people were pronouncing the former abbreviation ENEMY, the best unintended acronym until the Northern Ireland Police Service.

Gloria Swanson’s 3rd husband the Marquis Henri de la Falaise, acting very much the middle husband, defends his use of the title marquis (it’s not clear in the article who questioned it or to whom he defended his marquisiosity). He says the title “has not caused me vanity,” then talks about being embarrassed that he only has the birth and marriage certificates of his ancestors dating back to 1271, names every French king who re-affirmed the title, and waves around his (notarized) papers. He says in the US he’s known as Hank. Gloria, wearing a dressing gown because of course she is, says, “I am greatly pained at these reports and want the thing settled once and for all.”

The limitation on the strength of vodka in Russia has been lifted, and Moscow is soooooo drunk right now.

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Today -100: October 6, 1925: Smashed to atoms

In Italy, the Confederation of Fascist Trade Unions comes to an agreement with the employer group the Confederation of Industry to deal exclusively with each other, shutting out the Socialist unions. The Italian, presumably Fascist, press says this will change workers’ attitudes from class warfare to class cooperation.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad is indicted for transporting beer. The railroad says the two carloads were labeled “cereal beverage” and how were they to know?

At the Locarno Conference, Germany agrees to join the League of Nations. It will also sign treaties with France over the Rhineland and for arbitration.

Susan Brandeis, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and herself a lawyer, argues a case before the Supremes. The NYT thinks she is the first woman to do so, and they’re off by 45 years. She argues for a lawyer fined for charging more than $3 to file an affidavit to the Veterans’ Bureau.  Daddy recuses himself.

British Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks (Jix to his friends, if any) says he wants new powers to deal with the Red Menace, though who even needs them because, there would be such a backlash to any Communist impertinence (okay, he didn’t use that word, but he was thinking it), the CP “will be smashed to atoms.”

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Today -100: October 5, 1925: Bordering on diplomatic tactlessness

The Paris-Strasbourg express train crashes into a freight train because someone forgot about the change back from Daylight Saving Time and someone in the other rail line didn’t.

What’s an international peace conference without a good ol’ assassination rumor? Today’s is about German nationalists intending to kill Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann for his plan to sign a security compact within the framework of the hated Versailles Treaty. The German government would really like to revisit the whole “war guilt” thing, but France and Britain are nixing that.

Stresemann complains that Soviet policies, including using Berlin as a center for disseminating propaganda, are “bordering on diplomatic tactlessness.”

And the Romanian police thwart yet another possibly imaginary assassination plot against King Ferdinand and Queen Marie to serve as a trigger for a possibly imaginary revolution plot.

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Today -100: October 4, 1925: Of rent, keystones, assassinations, special constables, and Venetians

The Dept of Justice’s landlord serves a 30-day eviction notice on its offices, possibly in a move to jack up the rent.

Ahead of the opening of the Locarno (Switzerland) Conference French PM Paul Painlevé says “Franco-German reconciliation is like the keystone of European civilization.”

A local Fascist leader is assassinated in Florence, the assassin shot up but not killed by members of the crowd. For some reason Florence officials respond by closing all the theatres.

3,000 British Fascisti will join the Liverpool cops as special constables to serve in emergencies like the Communist uprising that they claim is planned for spring. The Liverpool PD says sure, why not. I strongly doubt there are 3,000 British Fascisti.

The citizens of Venice, California vote for the city to be absorbed into Los Angeles.

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Today -100: October 3, 1925: Of crockers and handshakes

Aimée Crocker, 60, daughter of the late California Supreme Court Justice Edwin Crocker, marries a Russian prince, Prince Mstislav Galitzine, 25. He’s her 5th husband and 2nd prince, not counting the prince she was engaged to but didn’t marry. She had a ridiculously colorful life.

Russian Minister of Health Nikolai Semashko starts a crusade against handshaking. He’s also not too thrilled with kissing.

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Today -100: October 2, 1925: We have not more money than that

The conference over repayment of the French war debt to the US collapses. French Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux tells the Americans, “We have offered all that France can pay; we have not more money than that.”  According to the NYT, “He did not appear particularly depressed this evening.”

Two unconnected people are arrested in Indiana and Ohio for pretending to be survivors of the Shenandoah crash. I’m not sure what criminal charge that would be.

The first television transmission, by John Logie Baird in London, including the image of a ventriloquist’s dummy, Stooky Bill, and some random office worker in the same building, although the resolution isn’t good enough to make out the latter’s face.

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Today -100: October 1, 1925: Of bumbling amateurs, pomp, debt, dust, bad beer, and large underwear

At the presidential board of inquiry into recent Navy aircraft disasters, Col. Billy Mitchell blames the crash of the Shenandoah on “bumbling amateurs,” which are the worst kind of amateurs.

Headline of the Day -100:

The German president doesn’t want a fuss made over his 78th birthday tomorrow. No parades, no flags. The far-right nationalists had intended to exploit his birthday for far-right nationalist propaganda.

France counter-counter-proposes paying $6.2 billion of war debt to the US over 67 years. 

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 30, 1925: Of fightin’ Bobses, dining at Balmoral, and straw hats

Robert La Follette Jr. easily wins the special election to fill his late father’s US Senate seat.

The British Labour Party conference rejects the Communist Party (CPGB)’s request for affiliation by a wide margin. During the angry debate, one “Red” delegate calls party leader Ramsay MacDonald “the man who dines at Balmoral,” i.e., with the king. While Communists have been banned since last year as Labour candidates, there are plenty of Communist delegates at the conference representing unions.

The maharajah of Kapurthala (Punjab) visits Atlantic City. What does the NYT think you should know about that? 

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Today -100: September 29, 1925: Of prohibition, subs, apoplexy, ratcatchers, and (ahem) professions

The Legislative Assembly of India votes approval of the idea of introducing Prohibition. Of course British colonial officials, sots to a man, won’t allow any such thing.

Divers are still trying to get inside the sunken submarine S-51 to rescue crewmen who couldn’t possibly have survived this long.

George Hagedues, a Hungarian MP who is president of the Awakening Hungary group, gives an anti-Semitic speech and then drops dead. He died as he lived: of apoplexy.

Republican candidate for New York City mayor Frank “That Fountain Pen Guy” Waterman claims the Board of Health spends $72 for each rat it catches and $77 for each flea. That is, each flea killed. They don’t catch fleas; they’re not weirdos. Update: ah, the fleas in question were on the rats, which is relevant if you’re trying to prevent bubonic plague. Anyway, he’s claiming these ratcatchers are examples of Tammany patronage featherbedding.

The London Daily News claims Mussolini is trying to put together an alliance with Germany and Russia, without so far receiving a positive response from the latter.

The British censors finally allow George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893) a public performance in London.

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Today -100: September 28, 1925: Of annoyed Italians and repulsive banquets

9 Italian MPs arrive at New York harbor for the Interparliamentary Conference in D.C. and are greeted by clashes between Fascists and anti-Fascists, with some light shooting. “As the taxicabs sped eastward along Fifty-sixth Street the delegates had an opportunity of seeing how their countrymen in this city behave when they were annoyed about something.”

Headline of the Day -100:

That’s the H.M.S. Repulse, which Prince Edward has been using as his personal yacht, with a specially installed squash court, sauna, bubble bath (I assume that means jacuzzi), etc.

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Today -100: September 27, 1925: Of derogatory statements and pep

Herbert Ladd, a carpenter, is charged with making “derogatory statements” about the Willimantic (Connecticut) Trust Company’s solvency that led to a run on the bank. A carpenter.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: “The church dogmas of today need pep, as the Americans would say, and pep is spirit communication – the actual proof of survival after death.”

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Today -100: September 26, 1925: How are they going to eat?

The steamship City of Rome collides with the submarine S-51 off the coast of Rhode Island. 33 crewmen on the latter drown, 3 survive. The biggest submarine disaster in US history, which includes the Great War.

Coal-mine owners in West Virginia get many injunctions against United Mine Workers officers trying to call on non-union miners to strike. One injunction is against picketing at the mines of the Consolidated Coal Company, where scabs have been hooted – HOOTED! – on the way to and from work. The petitioners especially object to a picket-line song which goes a little... like this:

Shoot them in the head,

Shoot them in the feet,

Shoot them in the dinner bucket,

How are they going to eat?

The US counter-proposal to France’s offer to pay $4 billion in war debts over 62 years: how about $10 billion? Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux says he won’t change his plans to return to France next week.

The investigation into the crash of the Shenandoah is showing that the dirigible was just badly designed and badly constructed, lacking stability and engine power. The Navy knew this and was planning to make alterations, but still had the thing flying about, doing important Navy things like flying over fairs.

John Scopes begins graduate study at the University of Chicago, studying geology.

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Today -100: September 25, 1925: It’s pronounced just like it’s spelled, probably

In Washington for discussions on repayment of the French war debt, Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux offers to pay $25 million per year for 5 years, rising thereafter until $4 billion will have been paid by 1987. The Americans reject the proposal out of hand.

Hungary claims that Russia gave the Hungarian Communists a list of people, including Adm. Horthy, to be assassinated within the next 6 months.

The US will deport a Siamese man (and accused arsonist) named Lleieusszuieuszesszec Willihiminizzissteizzii Hurrizzissteizzii.

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Today -100: September 24, 1925: Of Hungarian Jews & executioners

Since the US is already banning British Communist MP  Shapurji Saklatvala from the Interparliamentary Conference, the Federation of Hungarian Jews in America asks Secretary of State Frank Kellogg to also ban 8 Hungarian delegates for inciting pogroms, suppressing free speech, etc.

John Hulbert, the executioner at Sing Sing and elsewhere, plans to retire next June when he becomes eligible for a pension. Since executions are by electric chair, his replacement will have to be an electrician like him (that’s his day job at Auburn Prison). He gets $150 per execution (his predecessor quit after the state refused to continue paying his standard $250 rate). At his retirement, Hulbert will have executed 140 men (and no women). He will commit suicide, by gunshot, in 1929.

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Today -100: September 23, 1925: Of girders and agitators

The crash of the airship Shenandoah is blamed on “poor girders,” which sounds like a euphemism.

Britain plans to deport foreign “Communist agitators,” starting with 50 French and Russians.

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Today -100: September 22, 1925: A regular working day

Special Prohibition agent Thomas Easton, at the trial of a man he arrested in Middletown, New York because the man’s WIFE sold him whisky, is asked by the judge how many drinks he had in the course of his duties that day. After he admits to 24, the judge dismisses the case.

The Stoke-on-Trent Labour Party adopts Lady Cynthia Mosley, wife of future Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley and daughter of the late Lord Curzon, viceroy of India (who had strong views on interference by women in political life) (he was against it), as its candidate for Parliament. They may come to regret their choice.

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Today -100: September 21, 1925: I expect an uninteresting and meaningless campaign

Parisians are pissed off at a new tax on horsemeat.

Fiorello LaGuardia declines to launch a 3rd-party campaign for NYC mayor. He says the primaries so confused the issues that he would have no practical road to victory. “I expect an uninteresting and meaningless campaign,” he says. He predicts that Walker will be a crap mayor.

Coolidge has been taking walks around DC accompanied by a few Secret Service agents, unrecognized by the public. Including Nathan Smith of Baltimore, driving a car that almost hits him a block from the White House. He’ll be fined $35, though he claims he was a good 20 feet from Coolidge and was going 8 mph.

In New Albany, Mississippi, a mob burns a black man at the stake after seizing him from the sheriffs and forcing a confession out of him for attacking a farmer’s daughter.

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Today -100: September 20, 1925: AFTER SEPTEMBER 15TH!

Calvin Coolidge has been spotted wearing a straw hat after September 15th.

Sir Francis Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, dies at 77 in Cambridge. 4 of Charles’s 10 children are still alive. Francis was a botanist who thought plants had “unconscious memory.”

Harold Lloyd’s “The Freshman” or, as I think of it, the prequel to “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock,” premieres.

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Today -100: September 19, 1925: Of timely justice and angry law students

Italian prosecutors are said to be nearly done, after only 16 months, with the preliminary work for the prosecution of the assassins of Deputy Giacomo Matteotti, and might even be ready to put them on trial in 1926.

The (wooden) buildings of the upper and lower houses of the Japanese Parliament (Imperial Diet) are burned down. The suspects are “angry law students” pissed off at the hard questions on the bar exam they were taking in the House of Reps.

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Today -100: September 18, 1925: Of hat profiteers, future planes, and salutes

The prefect of Constantinople orders limits to profits on hats after “hat profiteers” take advantage of Pres. Atatürk’s ban on fezzes and his order for the compulsory wearing of “the headdress of civilization” by civil servants, spurring a rush to purchase chapeaux.

Henry Ford predicts a century of prosperity, so that’s nice. He says the airplane of the future is a combination of dirigible, heavier-than-air plane and helicopter. Sort of a turducken of aircraft, I’m assuming.

Some especially Fascist companies in Italy are banning handshaking in favor of the “Roman salute.”

Italy claims to have uncovered a plot for a national rising. 100 Communists are arrested in Florence.

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Today -100: September 17, 1925: Of private lives, inflammatory and revolutionary speeches, and nauseating music

NYC Mayor John Hylan says he’ll return to private life, almost as if the voters gave him any choice in the matter. There’s some talk about the Hearst papers, which backed Hylan, pushing a 3rd-party run by Fiorello LaGuardia, who is not disavowing it at this time.

Robert La Follette Jr., 30, easily wins the Wisconsin Republican Party primary for his late father’s US Senate seat, rattling establishment Republicans. The party apparatus will not support him in the general.

There’s been some fuss over British Labour/Communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala’s plans to come to the US as part of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Washington D.C., with some MPs refusing to come if he does. Now, Secretary of State Frank Kellogg revokes his visa, citing his “inflammatory and revolutionary speeches.” Saklatvala was the first Indian member of the British Parliament.

Musical Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 16, 1925: Walker walks it

NYC Mayor John Hylan is defeated in the Democratic primary by Tammany- and Gov. Smith-backed Jimmy Walker by a margin large enough to forestall any idea he had of running as an independent in the general. He does especially badly in Manhattan. The fountain pen guy wins the Republican primary, not that that matters in the slightest.

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Today -100: September 15, 1925: The decent people will predominate

Wolves are “ravaging” Russia, killing cattle and the odd human.

Senator Robert Stanfield (R-Oregon) insists that his arrest in a Baker, Oregon café for being drunk and disorderly is a stitch-up and he hadn’t had a drop to drink, not a drop. He claims the cop who arrested him and beat him up (Stanfield threw the first punch) has been fired.

With the NYC Democratic primary imminent, Mayor John Hylan’s friends say he’ll run as an independent if he loses by fewer than 30,000 votes.

Hylan says the election odds being quoted for the primary are “fakes” paid for by the traction interests (Brooklyn Betting Commissioner Fred Schumm is disgusted that such a bitter campaign has produced so little betting, with no one, except some late Wall Street money, willing to put money on Hylan no matter what the odds).

Hylan says he’ll win anyway: “The decent people will predominate”. He says that if nothing else, his campaign has “unmasked [Gov.] Al Smith. He is no longer of the common people. He is serving the interests and eating $63 worth of ham and eggs a day at the Biltmore which you are paying for.” He points out that while Smith praised Hylan for his “clean life,” he hasn’t said anything similar about the candidate he actually supports, Jimmy Walker. Hylan refers to Walker’s “record” along these lines, but doesn’t say what he’s referencing, presumably because New Yorkers know. But what do they know about J.J.? The speakeasies? The brothels? The, gambling, I think?

Walker addresses a meeting in Harlem, bringing with him black boxer Harry Wills. He says he told the Boxing Commission, which was set up by a law he introduced in 1920, that if they discriminated against Wills (this is presumably about the heavyweight title bout with Jack Dempsey that never happened after Dempsey weaseled out, saying he’d never box any negro again) he would work to repeal the law, which would make prize fighting illegal in New York again. I suspect Walker undercut whatever good that did him with the black audience by saying “I come from a race and a religion [Irish and Catholic] which have as many haters as you have”. (Hylan’s also a Catholic).

Anna Jarvis, who created the holiday of Mother’s Day, is acquitted of disorderly conduct for showing up at a War Mothers convention to protest their use of the carnation as an emblem. Jarvis would later become so disgusted by the commercialism of her holiday that she started a movement to rescind it, whereupon, if I have this correctly, the florist and greeting card interests paid to have her put away in a sanatorium for the rest of her life.

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Today -100: September 14, 1925: Of unsound minds and Charlestons

Rear Admiral William Moffett, chief of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, suggests that outspoken critic of military aviation policy Col. Billy Mitchell is “of unsound mind and is suffering from delusions of grandeur.” They are definitely going to court-martial his ass.

The Jersey City police issue an order banning the Charleston from the city’s dance halls, because, see, the vibrations of a large number of Charleston dancers might shake the halls to bits.

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Today -100: September 13, 1925: Of assassinations, gunboats, and censors

Romanian police thwart an assassination attempt against King Ferdinand and Queen Marie in Kishinev, Bessarabia, presumably in retaliation against a mass trial of Bessarabians for a revolt against land seizures.

The US sends a gunboat and a light cruiser to Nicaragua, as was the custom, because there might be political upheaval.

The Lord Chamberlain (um, in Britain), on something of a censorship streak lately, refuses to license that musical version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin unless they alter the “semi-nude” costumes in the slave sale scene, which are definitely the most offensive thing about a musical version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  (Update: the costume was in fact copied from an 1862 print. After changes are made to it, the play is issued its license.)

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Today -100: September 12, 1925: Of fraud and insanity and parks

At the International Spiritualist Congress in Paris, at which Arthur Conan Doyle gives a talk, one Mercy Cadwallader from Chicago, whom I assume just based on that name is a medium in a caftan, complains that the persecution of “some of our best mediums, principally in Boston” by Harry Houdini has prevented them holding seances. The Congress adopts a resolution that mediums “should be protected from charges of fraud and insanity.”

Plans for a state park on Long Island encompassing Jones Beech and Fire Island, Robert Moses’ dream, begin, very much against the wishes of the rich locals. It will involve a lot of expensive highway-building to make the beaches accessible.

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Today -100: September 11, 1925: Of ill-smelling cages, bunkum, and cowboy earls

Headline of the Day -100:

Isn’t that the city motto?

The NYC Municipal Assembly passes that 5¢-fare bill intended to undercut Mayor Hylan’s use of the issue in his re-election bid. He says he’ll sign it, even while attacking it as a piece of “bunkum,” and really, how did the word bunkum just drop out of our vocabulary? “Bunk” just doesn’t cut it for me.

Wyoming “cowboy” Oliver Henry Wallop (he owns a ranch and breeds polo ponies, but sure, “cowboy” is grabbier) inherits the title of Earl of Portsmouth. Born in Britain but a US citizen since 1904, he previously served in the Wyoming Legislature. He’d prefer not to have to renounce his US citizenship to take up his seat in the House of Lords, but he’ll be forced to. His grandson was US Sen. Malcolm Wallop.

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Today -100: September 10, 1925: Of convincing resemblances and executions

Britain rejects Turkey’s demand for a plebiscite in Mosul over whether it joins Iraq or Turkey.

The International Spiritualist Congress in Paris considers developing a wireless device to communicate with the spirit world, putting hard-working mediums out of work. Members of the Psychical Research Society of New York show off a photograph of a ghost. “The ghost looked like a wreath of smoke escaping from a cigarette, but delegates found it contained a very convincing resemblance to a soul.”

Glaswegians petition for the reprieve of convicted murderer John Keen, not so much out of sympathy for him as for the two junior magistrates who’d be required to attend the execution and who are women. (Update: They will attend the execution and one will even shake the condemned man’s hand, at his request.)

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Today -100: September 9, 1925: Of general outbreaks of hooliganism and borders

British authorities seem to think a Communist uprising is coming: trying to subvert soldiers, “laying plans for a general outbreak of hooliganism” featuring “a wholesale window-smashing orgy,” who knows what shenanigans they might get up to. Scotland Yard is expected to round up the usual Red suspects shortly, as was/is the custom. In Islington, Communists attack a National Fascisti meeting.

Turkey and Britain are disputing Iraq’s borders. Turkey now says it may not accept any League of Nations decision and will insist on a plebiscite in Mosul over whether it joins Iraq or Turkey.

A large white mob besiege the home in a white neighborhood of Detroit into which the black family of Dr. Ossian Sweet have just moved. Someone, Sweet or one of his friends protecting the house, shoots at the unruly mob, killing the guy who lives across the street and was just watching from his porch. Everyone in the Sweet house is arrested. The NAACP and Clarence Darrow will become involved, so more on this later.

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Today -100: September 8, 1925: Of disarmament, reigns of buffoonery, immigration, and whistles

At the opening of the 6th assembly of the League of Nations, French PM Paul Painlevé asks the League to convene a disarmament conference, as opposed to the conference on the very same subject which the US is thinking about calling. In another slight to the Americans, only 35 spectator seats are assigned to them, with the job of picking the lucky observers dumped on the US Embassy (Woodrow Wilson’s widow Edith gets one).

René Viviani, French PM at the start of the war (June 1914 to October 1915), “independent Socialist” and anti-Semite, dies at 61.

Dr. Stephen Wise, president of the America Jewish Congress, returns from the World Zionist Congress in Vienna and says the anti-Semitic/Hakenkreuzler protests there were actually aimed at the Austrian government rather than at Jews. Nonsense. He also has opinions about the New York City elections: “I hope that the reign of buffoonery in New York City will soon come to an end.” Spoiler Alert: Nope.

In the fiscal year ending June 30th, net immigration to the US declined 68% over the previous fy. Some countries failed to fill even the reduced quotas set by the newish immigration law, while others, including Italy, had more people return home than emigrated.

A man is fined 10s for whistling for a taxi in London, which was made an offense during the war (he used a physical whistle, not his mouth).

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Today -100: September 7, 1925: Of dep duels & midnight movies

After the most recent fatal duel between members of the Mexican Congress, in the actual Chamber, some members are considering banning deputies carrying pistols (I presume just in the Chamber, but it’s not clear).

Movie theaters in Ocean City, New Jersey have started showing movies at midnight on Sunday nights/Monday mornings to circumvent Blue laws.

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Today -100: September 6, 1925: Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!

Col. Billy Mitchell, who knows a little about air crashes, says the crash of the Shenandoah and the sea, um, shall we say landing, of a Navy plane attempting a non-stop flight from San Francisco to Hawaii, which set a distance record for a seaplane, if you include the bit where they had to sail the thing to Hawaii using a sail they made out of the material on the wing, “are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the War and Navy Departments.” And then he gets on a plane to go fishing, and, I mean, what sort of person gets on any plane less than a week after being in a plane crash?

Representatives of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia, presumably in the Sudetenland, a word beginning to come into general usage, protest government plans to close a quarter of German schools.

The German Army holds war games near the Danzig Corridor, the territory awarded to Poland after the war, pissing Poland off. The Germans respond by accusing Polish propaganda of “warlike persecution of Germany” (that’s from the Acht-Uhr-Abendblatt newspaper, which accuses Poland of trying to get the League of Nations to allow a “Polish war of conquest against East Prussia”). Germany spreads false rumors about Polish cavalry crossing the border (well, they did, chasing after their escaped horses).

Headline of the Day -100:

Stanley Melbourne Bruce, prime minister of Australia and also in charge of the sheep dip, explains the White Australia policy to the NYT. It’s not a policy of racial superiority, he lies. Rather, it’s about maintaining a certain living standard by excluding people from poor countries who would cause “dilution” of the present population. He points out that the US, and Coolidge in particular, have the same view of immigration from shithole countries.

Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera premieres. You don’t even want to know how he got his face like that.

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Today -100: September 5, 1925: Of war dirigibles, nickels, evolution tickets, poison, and champagne

Metaphor of the Day -100:

Coolidge wants to build a replacement dirigible that can be used for military purposes, a war dirigible, if you will. He doesn’t think there was any structural defect in the Shenandoah, which was not the opinion of its captain, according to his widow. The German dirigible pilot who oversaw construction of the Shen, Anton Heinen, blames the crash on the removal of 8 of its 18 safety valves, saying the victims gave their lives to save helium. He does say “I would not call it murder,” so that’s okay then. He adds that if the ship had used hydrogen instead of helium, it might not have blowed up.

Tammany Hall will strip NYC Mayor John Hylan of his central campaign issue by having the Municipal Assembly vote to make the 5¢ fare permanent unless a referendum decides otherwise. When this bill was introduced 6 months ago Hylan threatened to veto it (he now says he’ll vote for it) purely because it was introduced by one of his political enemies and because he’s bad at politics.

A NY Supreme Court justice bans Hylan giving speeches on municipal radio station WNYC, which he’s been doing.

Frederick Eastman of Carmel-by-the-Sea, whoever that may be, will run for governor of California on an evolution ticket, whatever that means. He also opposes capital punishment.

A future mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea will act in a movie with an orangutan.

Bulgaria denies that King Boris was poisoned. Why, he just gave a dinner party for British naval officers.

The French Debt Commission is coming to Washington to negotiate, what else, the French debt. Will they be bringing a supply of champagne under diplomatic immunity? Do you have to ask?

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Today -100: September 4, 1925: Not as safe as a great many people have been led to believe

The US Navy’s dirigible USS Shenandoah breaks in three near Caldwell, Ohio, flying during a storm, two years after its first flight. 14 of its crew of 43 are killed, including its captain, Zachary Lansdowne, which is a dirigible-captain sort of name, I suppose. Crowds will race to the crash site to loot the airship for souvenirs and valuable duralumin, as one does.

Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur says the Navy will continue to use huge rigid airships. Well, airship, since it now has one dirigible remaining (and that one isn’t allowed to be used in war, by the agreement for its construction by Germany).  Rear Admiral William Moffett, head of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, also says Navy aviation policy won’t change but “This accident does show that anything that flies in the air is not as safe as a great many people have been led to believe.” Moffett will die in, what else, a dirigible crash in 1933.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: September 3, 1925: The eternal question: dogs or opera

NY Gov. Al Smith tells William Randolph Hearst to stop interfering with the politics of New York City. 

A “Communist agitator” whose name and perhaps nationality the NYT seem not to know (French?) was deported by the US 9 months ago and put on a passenger ship – third class – to Cherbourg, France. Which sent him back. So without ever being allowed off the shp, he’s been going back and forth for those 9 months, back and forth, back and forth, with no end in sight.

New York City has 1/8th of the federal income tax payers in the country; they pay 1/3rd of the total tax of the US.

Doctors in Hawaii are treating leprosy with radium. Successfully, they claim.

Berlin is considering raising the dog tax to support opera, although they are worried about pissing off dog owners. One newspaper says, “It is a question of whether raising a dog or attending the opera is the more cultural.”

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Today -100: September 2, 1925: Of taxes

I guess Congress didn’t reverse the release of income tax payment info after the hubbub last year, so they are released for the second year in a row and this time there’s no legal question about the right of newspapers to publish them, which the NYT does gleefully, listing the taxes of bankers, actors (Douglas Fairbanks pays the most), Jack Dempsey, baseball players, etc. Ford Motor Company paid $16 million, John D. Rockefeller Jr. $6,277,669, the most of any individual in the US. Pres. Coolidge paid $14,091.

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Today -100: September 1, 1925: Of strikes, crashes, and morphine

The anthracite coal mine strike begins, with 828 mines and 272 collieries shut down and 150,000 miners on strike. There has been no violence as the United Mine Workers are eschewing picket lines this time. 

Col. Billy Mitchell, who was forced out of the Army Air Service earlier this year and will be court-martialed for insubordination later in the year for uttering his opinions (airplanes good, battleships bad), is flying a plane when its engine quits at 100 feet. He steers it into the ground, where it hits a ditch, upends. He crawls out from underneath it, then drives to Fort Sam Houston to do his job, catching up on paperwork.

Hermann Göring is committed to a psychiatric hospital in Sweden. He acquired a morphine addiction after being shot during the Beer Hall Putsch and it’s making him erratic and violent. If only there were some job for which those traits...

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Today -100: August 31, 1925: Of great excitement and bringing the priesthood into disrepute

There are anti-Chinese outbreaks all over Mexico, including the kidnapping of 40 in Sonora, “causing great excitement among the yellow race.” Will there be a follow-up on the kidnapping? I suspect not.

Lithuania bans George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” for being “irreligious and calculated to bring the priesthood into disrepute.” Reminds me of the movie “The Sound of Music” being banned in the 1970s in at least one Latin American country run by a military junta (Argentina? Chile?) for bringing the military into disrepute.

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Today -100: August 30, 1925: Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable

Germany, wanting to join the League of Nations but worried about incurring military obligations given that it has basically no (official) military, will ask to have the same exemptions the League grants neutral Switzerland.

Col. Billy Mitchell, who was forced out of the Army Air Service, says the government is refusing to allow him to test a super-airplane capable of flying non-stop from the US to Paris carrying a ton of explosives. “Old fogy ideas are holding back the inevitable,” he says. Officers in the Air Service say they don’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

William Stoddard, author of over 100 books and assistant private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, dies at 89.

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Today -100: August 29, 1925: Of fighters

NYC Mayor John Hylan responds to Gov. Alfred E. Smith, denying his accusation that he negotiated with the Klan at the 1924 Democratic Convention. Hylan says he’s a fighter. Smith retorts, sure, ‘cuz he fights with fucking EVERYONE. He says Hylan doesn’t understand his grade-elimination program in Queens.

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Today -100: August 28, 1925: Of coal and secret conferences

Anthracite coal miners will begin a major strike Monday. 

In a speech in Brooklyn, New York Gov. Al Smith accuses NYC Mayor John Hylan of having been “in secret conference with the Klan, with the representative of the Klan” during the 1924 Democratic Convention. I gather by that he means William Gibbs McAdoo.

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Today -100: August 27, 1925: Of souls, radio teas, hooting, dwarfs, and wouldn’t it be cool if there actually were a baseball team called the Cads?

Prof. Charles Henry of the Sorbonne says he has proof that humans have a soul that survives death.

Carrie Chapman Catt’s speech on the 5th anniversary of the 19th Amendment (women’s activism is all about abolishing war now, she says) is broadcast on WEAF radio. In Westchester County, there are maybe 100 “radio teas” where women gather to listen to the speech.

At the World Zionist Congress, a call for a Jewish army in Palestine provokes anti-militarist “violent hooting” and militarist “counter-hooting.”

The Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition next year will feature “the largest collection of dwarfs ever assembled.” The article (for which there seems to be no link) fails to explain why dwarfs are required. Was Philadelphia originally founded by dwarfs? That would explain a lot, probably. 

That’s “dwarfs,” by the way. The plural “dwarves” was coined by J.R. Tolkein to distinguish his characters from Disney’s Snow White dwarfs.

NYT Index Typo of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 26, 1925: Of devoted mothers, motorless flying machines, tongs, and watermelons

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson denies New York’s extradition request for Virginia Canaday, who kidnapped her son Roscoe Jr. from her ex-husband last month and fled the state. Ferguson calls Ms. Canaday a “devoted mother.” The ex kidnapped his kid from San Antonio first, back in April, removing him to Forest Hills, Long Island. There’s also a daughter, but no one seems to be mentioning her. I think she’s still with her father.

Inventor Alphonse Dube commits suicide by hanging himself after years of failing to get a motorless flying machine to work. And by “motorless flying machine,” I mean wings. That he flapped. Broke his leg last time he tried it.

A gang war between the On Leong Tong and the Hip Sing Tong erupts in shootings in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, St Louis and Minneapolis, despite the fact that “Hip Sing Tong” is objectively fun to say out loud. Do it now.

A farmer sends Pres. Coolidge a 100-pound watermelon.

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Today -100: August 25, 1925: Of unheard-of impudence and charlestons

At the World Zionist Congress in Vienna, Hungarian delegate Dr. Kahan points out that Hungary is the only country besides Russia where it is illegal to belong to a Zionist organization.

US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg, responding to a complaint by a Zionist organization against the violence in Vienna directed at that Congress, passed on the complaint to the Austrian government (er, maybe). The Hakenkreuzler (Austrian Nazis) newspaper Deutschösterrichische Tageszeitung attacks Kellogg’s “unheard-of impudence”: “As a private person he may serve his beloved Jews as much as he likes, but as Secretary of State it is none of his concern if the native population of Vienna thinks about the Jews differently from him.”

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 24, 1925: Of non-engagement

Well, in the absence of any interesting substantive news today -100, let’s go with Royal Rumours™! Prince Henry of Britain, 25, the third son of King George, is reportedly (“again”) engaged to Lady Mary Scott, 21, daughter of the Duke & Duchess of Buccleuch. “If the rumors turn out to be correct, the engagement will be very popular.” They aren’t.

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Today -100: August 23, 1925: Of kluxers and racialists

Pres. Coolidge appoints M.O. Dunning, the paid lobbyist of the Ku Klux Klan, as collector of the port of Savannah, Georgia.

In Vienna, 20,000 “racialists,” many of them veterans in uniform and Hakenkreuzler in “‘Hitler’ shirts,” whatever those might be, hold a protest demonstration against the World Zionist Congress.

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Today -100: August 22, 1925: Metaphor of the Day -100

New York City is undergoing an unusually large mosquito invasion this year, including City Hall, where they’re breeding in the pools around the statue of Civic Virtue.

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Today -100: August 21, 1925: A seat, not a strap

Trying again to defang NYC Mayor Hylan’s main issue, Jimmy Walker says he is not only in favor of the 5¢ car fare, but “I’m for the five-cent fare with a seat, and not for the five-cent fare with a strap.”

Musical... Comedy? ... of the Day -100:

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Today -100: August 20, 1925: A man usually carries a gun for a purpose

NY Gov. Al Smith says people shouldn’t carry guns: “I have walked in the lower sections of New York for years and have never felt the need of a weapon. A man usually carries a gun for a purpose.”

One Walter White suggests, in a letter to the NYT, that NYC reduce traffic fatalities by adopting a system he saw in practice in Mobile, Alabama in which pedestrians as well as vehicles are required to obey traffic lights. Mr. White don’t know New Yorkers very well, do he?

The leopard Zizi who escaped into the Bois de Boulogne and wandered the park for 3 days, gets into the courtyard of a nearby school and is shot dead. Fuck.

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Today -100: August 19, 1925: Of debt, anti-Semites, and segregation

Belgium agrees to pay back its war & reconstruction debt to the US over 62 years.

The Hakenkreuzler rioting against the World Zionist Congress in Vienna has caused $4 million in damage.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals recently, I guess, declared zoning laws enforcing racial segregation illegal. Also illegal: a white mob in “fine old residential sections of Baltimore” attack a black family who are trying to move into a house they just leased, as well as the white man who owns the house, who now says he’ll refund the family’s money and not lease it to black folks.

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Today -100: August 18, 1925: Mass cannot govern mass

Anti-Semites attack the Freiheit Platz in Vienna where the 14th World Zionist Congress has convened. The police are holding them back.

Mussolini tells the Daily Press, “mass cannot govern mass; quantity cannot govern quantity.” Also, “there can be no such thing as liberty, which exists but in the imagination of philosophers who seek their unpractical philosophy from the skies... Is there such a thing as liberty? Civilization is the inverse of personal liberty.”  Also, too, “Julius Caesar is my ideal”.

Headline of the Day -100:

A couple of days ago a leopard escaped the Paris zoological gardens into the Bois de Boulogne, “rendering its beautiful nooks and paths unsuitable to lovers for moonlight strolls.” Cops pursue her on horses, bicycles and elephants, as was the custom. The leopard’s name is Zizi, because of course it is.

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Today -100: August 17, 1925: Of subs and Joisey Fashis

John Scopes, who resigned from Dayton’s High School after the Monkey Trial, will be replaced by someone who rejoices in the name Raleigh Valentine Reece, who does not believe in evolution. His brother is a member of Congress.

A meeting in Newark of Italians opposed to Fascism is invaded by the Fascisti League. A fight ensued involving stilettos and razors, with six stabbings, as was the custom. The Fascists claim to have gone to the meeting unarmed.

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Today -100: August 16, 1925: Of divorced Communists

To increase the number of women Communist agitators in Norway, male Norwegian Communists are marrying in Moscow (it is unclear if their new wives are Russian or Norwegian), and then divorcing them in Oslo, because divorcees in Norway don’t lose their citizenship and can’t be deported. The husbands then return to Moscow, rinse and repeat.

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