Today -100: January 17, 1926: Of road warriors, Anastasias, and traffic lights

For 25 years, John D. Rockefeller has been trying to close a road that goes through his estate in the towns of North Tarrytown and Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York. The former now rejects his request, presumably in order to convenience passing headless horsemen (the town is the location of that Washington Irving story and has since changed its name to Sleepy Hollow). At first I thought the milkman fighting Rockefeller needed the road for his milk rounds, but actually his father owned a hotel and some years ago Rockefeller got the road leading to it closed. Revenge against a Rockefeller is the best kind of revenge.

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs asks Coolidge to support an amendment to the Constitution to establish uniform marriage and divorce laws, including preventing “the unfit” from marrying.

The Grand Duchess Olga travels to Germany to inspect a woman who claims to be the lost (i.e., dead) Grand Duchess Anastasia. Olga says the woman (who is in a sanatarium and may have been put up to this) looks nothing like Anastasia and furthermore speaks only German, a language Anastasia did not speak, and with a Bavarian accent no less.

Constantinople gets traffic signals, which are such a novelty that crowds gather to watch them change color, blocking traffic and rather defeating the point.

Bessie Lee Gambrill is named the first woman associate professor at Yale in a field other than nursing. Her field is elementary education. She’ll teach 30 years at Yale and die at 105 in 1988.

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Today -100: January 16, 1926: Coley Blease asks the tough questions

Senate opponents of the US joining the World Court are filibustering the bill, although they’ve kind of run out of arguments. Coleman Blease, standing in for an ill William Borah, resorts to reading out George Washington’s farewell address, interspersed with “extemporaneous comments on evolution and drinking by diplomats in Washington”, with likker (as we’re informed he calls it) causing “these foreigners” to “get drunk and... debauch our women.” Why, he asks, should a “cotton mill boy” be arrested for having a flask when “some little half-nigger from a foreign country” has diplomatic immunity?

Groups of monarchists are roaming the streets of Berlin, defacing police posters which describe Black Reichswehr members wanted for murder.

Turkey adopts a new Civil Code, consisting of the whole of the Swiss Civil Code, which is still being translated. It will abolish polygamy, make divorce more difficult, and eliminate the special protections of Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities, since Switzerland Swiss minorities are treated equally.

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Today -100: January 15, 1926: Of antis, retirements, and radios

The Women’s National Republican Club elects as its president Alice Chittenden, who used to be president of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

NY Gov. Al Smith says he’ll retire from politics when his current term ends in December (he won’t). He says he wants to go into some sort of business where he can employ his three sons. Some people think he really does want to make some money, having previously made the unusual decision to not be corrupt in his political career; others think he’s clearing his schedule to campaign for president in 1928.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: January 14, 1926: Of dirigibles, KKK Inc., and lynchings

An article on the disagreements within the Dept of the Navy has this delightful alliterative sub-hed:

The NY Ku Klux Klan is attempting to go around the Walker Anti-Klan Act, which was upheld by the NY Court of Appeals yesterday, by incorporating, thus relieving itself of the requirement to name its members.

A Coahoma County, Mississippi jury acquits G.O. Cain (!) of murder for his part in the lynching of Lindsey Coleman, who had been acquitted of killing a plantation storekeeper.

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Today -100: January 13, 1926: Of nyes, counterfeits, train robbers, and warm hearts

The Senate votes 41-39 to seat Gerald Nye, who was appointed more than 6 months ago by North Dakota Gov. Arthur Sorlie, who may or may not have had the legal authority to do so (badly written law). Nye is a La Follette Republican, which explains his support from Senate Dems.

Another day, another counterfeiting plot, although this one cleverly rested  not on actually forging Portuguese banknotes but on the simpler task of forging an order to the British company that prints Portugal’s currency. Or possibly not technically forged: signatures on the order may have come from actual government officials who are part of the plot, the aim of which was to acquire so much power in Portugal (they used the money to found banks and buy existing ones) that they could sell its colonies to Germany.

The NY Court of Appeals upholds the law requiring the Ku Klux Klan to file a list of its members, the text of its secret oaths, and its constitution with the state.

The Mexican Army is ruthlessly exterminating the bandits who attacked the Guadalajara-Mexico City train yesterday, including summary executions of bandits captured alive (and their alleged accomplices who were nowhere near the train). After they’ve confessed, of course.

Yesterday Helen Keller met Pres. Coolidge, today she meets First Lady Grace Coolidge, who used to teach deaf-mutes. Regarding Keller’s comment that Cal is not a cold man like everyone says, Grace says he thought only she knew he had a warm heart.

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Today -100: January 12, 1926: A dear president

Helen Keller, whose habit is to visit every president (from Grover Cleveland to LBJ), meets Calvin Coolidge, putting her finger on his lips to hear him (does that actually work?), and I CANNOT find a picture of it. She says, “They say you are cold, but you are not. You are a dear president.”

The Supreme Court refuses to stay the two-year sentence of Rep. John Langley (R-Kentucky) for violating Prohibition laws. Langley resigns from Congress, where he’s (ahem) served since 1907.

70 German reactionaries sign a manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Weimar Republic, including 6 former generals, the odd prince, university profs, Reichstag members, etc.

Bandits attack the Guadalajara-Mexico City train, killing something like 50 passengers and crew, though American and German passengers are unharmed. They insist, not that anyone asks, that they are revolutionists, not bandits. After burning the coaches, they escape on the locomotive.

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Today -100: January 11, 1926: Dispersion of energy

Mussolini says democracy only works in the US because its resources permit luxury & waste, whereas Italy is poor and can’t afford the “dispersion of energy... inherent in a democratic regime.”

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Today -100: January 10, 1926: Of rights, common criminal cases without any political or patriotic features, and the best films of 1925

The US protests Mexico’s new oil and land laws, some bits of which apply retroactively, as violating American “rights.” The threat is that recognition of the Mexican government will be withdrawn.

The Hungarian authorities are pretending that the counterfeiting plot was just a “common criminal case without any political or patriotic features” rather than the means to finance a monarchist coup. But they have stationed cops on every corner, just in case another counterfeiter walks by, presumably.

The NYT gives its list of the top 10 movies shown in NYC in 1925:

The Big Parade

The Last Laugh

The Unholy Three

The Gold Rush

The Merry Widow

The Dark Angel

Don Q., Son of Zorro

Ben-Hur

Stella Dallas

A Kiss for Cinderella

None of which are lost films, so, you know, findable on YouTube, Tubi, etc.

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Today -100: January 9, 1926: A big tree without a shadow

The Manila Municipal Court sentences City Councilman Antonio Paguia to 2 months for insulting Gov. Gen. Leonard Wood by calling him “a big tree without a shadow” and an oppressor and an autocrat and a despoiler of Philippine liberty.  Which is funny cuz it’s true.

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Today -100: January 8, 1926: Away from Judaism, with its Jehovah

Former kaiser Wilhelm writes an article for a book, The Opposition of the Germanic Movement to Judaism and Christianity, urging Germans to “break away from the belief that Jehovah, the God of the Jews, is our God.” Evidently the real forerunner of Christianity is not Judaism but the Aryan religion of Zarathustra. “Our slogan must be ‘Away from Judaism, with its Jehovah,’” he sloganizes. 

A federal judge in Chicago gives a reduced sentence to a saloon owner and a bartender after their lawyer says that their liquor was “of high quality and wholesome content” (i.e., not adulterated). The judge agrees this is a mitigating factor.

Headline of the Day -100:

Vice President Charles Dawes forgets his wife’s birthday.

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Today -100: January 7, 1926: Of worlds court, state of the state messages, marching on Budapest, and B & A

The move to join the World Court progresses as the Senate, by a vote of 54-16, rejects James Reed (D-Missouri)’s resolution calling for investigation of pro-World Court propaganda and propaganda from international bankers to influence Congress in favor of war debt settlements with European countries.

New York Gov. Al Smith presents his program to the Legislature, including: extending the gubernatorial term to 4 years; biennial legislative sessions with state senators serving 4-year terms & assemblycritters 2; an executive (i.e., unified) budget rather than each department’s budget being voted on separately; consolidation of counties, including within New York City; abolishing the Motion Picture Censorship Commission (he calls film censorship a useless activity opposed to freedom & liberty); abolishing the state census; max. 48 hours work for women and minors.

Gyula Gömbös, head of the Hungarian National Independence Party (which the NYT calls Fascisti), is said to be gathering forces to march on Budapest in 2 or 3 days.

George Burns & Gracie Allen marry. Have you seen the short films they made together c.1930? You should.

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Today -100: January 6, 1926: Of killer cops, cells, crowns prince, and sensational trashy periodical literature

Samuel Kranin, a Brooklyn glazier, goes to the police station to report that a patrolman beat him up in his store after he refused his demand for $2. After he picks the cop, John J. Brennan, out of a lineup, Brennan shoots him dead. The police surgeon says Brennan is drunk.

Hungarian authorities make many arrests in a conspiracy of fascist types, anti-Semites & royalists, including the chief of state police and Prince Ludwig Windish-Graetz, to counterfeit French francs to use to create a dictatorship and make Prince Albrecht king, displacing “Regent” Miklós Horthy. The Princess Windish-Graetz is assured by the head jailer that her husband is occupying “the best cell in the building.” Most of the police work in uncovering this plot was done by the French.

Romanian Crown Prince Carol drops the “crown prince” business and is now calling himself Scarlat Mondstireanu, which is just a fun name. The royal family will pay his past debts but not support him financially in the future.

Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler gives his annual speech to the students, denouncing “sensational trashy periodical literature,” which cultivated types of people should ignore because life is just too short. He doesn’t seem to specify what literary elements make for such garbage lit, but we do know that in 1941 he will personally block Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls from winning the Pulitzer,  calling it “offensive and lascivious.”

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Today -100: January 5, 1926: Worthless parliamentarians are the worst kind of parliamentarians.

William Hale and Ernest Burkhart are arrested in Oklahoma for their role in a plot that murdered Osage Indians to steal their oil money. Hale & Burkhart are played by, respectively, Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos declares the Greek constitution null and void, saying “the whole nation is tired of worthless parliamentarians.”

The New Haven, Connecticut Klan disbands after finding itself at odds with the national Klan, which New Haven secretary Arthur Mann calls the “greatest organization of graft known,” which signs up “riffraff,” anarchists and radicals for the $10 membership fee.

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Today -100: January 4, 1926: Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos, prime minister of Greece since June, declares himself dictator at a banquet of the Democratic guard, which is just sarcastic if you ask me. “Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles,” he declares.

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Today -100: January 3, 1926: I am glad the family kicked him out

Trotsky is elected to the Politburo. Stalin is re-elected as party general secretary.

A Pittsburgh Common Pleas Court judge rejects North Carolina’s request for the extradition of a black man on liquor charges after the judge is informed that he was indicted by a grand jury from which black people are excluded.

While some Romanians now think that Crown Prince Carol was forced to abdicate after participating in a plot to overthrow his father, King Ferdinand, he announces that he will divorce Princess Helen, which will be complicated because the marriage was Greek Orthodox. Carol is expected to look for a job in aviation. He’s been holed up in a hotel in Milan in which a Romanian woman is also staying, but is it his former wife or is it his mistress? Who can say. His brother Nicholas, who’s been living in Paris and is perhaps miffed that the belief there that he was the heir to the Romanian throne, which he did not contradict, has been refuted, says “Carol has done an unforgivable thing, and I am glad the family kicked him out.”

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Today -100: January 2, 1926: How much intelligence is the world prepared for?

Romanians are perplexed at Crown Prince Carol’s abdication. Some think it’s a woman thing, although they incorrectly assume the woman is the wife his family forced him to put aside, others think it’s about a scandal when he was chief of military aviation and it purchased some decrepit planes from France. His abdication letter says he won’t return to Romania for 6 years and after that only with the permission of the king and Parliament. 

Professor McDuff of Armstrong College, Durham University warns the Eugenics Educational Society that the white-collar labor market would become congested if the average intelligence were increased. “The world is not organized or prepared for a much higher level of intelligence than it already has.”

Only one person is killed trying to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadina, falling off the top of a building, but a grand stand collapses, injuring 235. Another woman dies of a cerebral hemorrhage watching the collapse.

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Today -100: January 1, 1926: Profane parasitical constructions are the worst kind of constructions

Romanian Crown Prince Carol, who left the country to attend Queen Alexandra’s funeral in November and never came back, renounces his right to succeed to the throne, all his other royal rights, and his membership in the royal family. His father accepts super-fast. This has something to do with the married prince’s affair with the divorcee he later married, Magda Lupescu (this is not widely known yet). Carol married someone else in 1918 but the royal family annulled it. His 4-year-old son Michael will be the new heir to the throne.

The NAACP says there were 18 lynchings in the US in 1925. Mississippi had 6, Florida 3, Georgia 2, with 1 each in Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Utah. 2 were burned to death. The article does not give a racial breakdown, though I’ll bet the NAACP did.

Mussolini wants to make Rome great again: “Rome must again become the wonder of the whole world.” He plans to demolish the houses (“parasitical constructions”) and “the contamination of tramways” around the Pantheon and other ancient sites, including Christian temples, to create large squares around them, create wide boulevards á la Haussmann, and do it all within five years.

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Today -100: December 31, 1925: Of pensions, fevers, longevity, and inventions

John Hylan resigns as New York City mayor one day before his term expires, which for some convoluted reason is the only way he gets a pension ($4,205 a year). Outgoing Police Commissioner Richard Enright does the same ($5,000). Temps will fill in for 24 hours.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover warns against the “fever of speculation” in stocks and real estate. Well I’m sure he’ll fix all that. He’s also against buying by instalment plan.

Dr. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr College tells an American Sociological Society meeting that by the year 2000 humans will live to 100 on average and some to 200. Hart lived to 78.

Nils Aasen, Norwegian inventor of both the hand grenade and the anti-personnel mine, dies at 47 of tuberculosis brought on by a nervous breakdown. He was having trouble trying to invent an insomnia mask.

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Today -100: December 30, 1925: But I was opposed to blood-letting

The British are so excited that Princess Astrid of Sweden – “according to an unnamed Swedish diplomat, she is one of the prettiest girls in Europe” (and what better judges of feminine pulchritude can there be than unnamed Swedish diplomats, I ask you) – will be visiting Buckingham Palace, so they’ve decided she’ll probably marry Prince Edward. She won’t. She’s 20, he’s 31.

Headline of the Day -100:

No one’s heard from Leon Trotsky in a while, but at the Communist Congress when Zinoviev reminds everyone that last year Trotsky was accused of semi-Menshevism – semi-Menshevism! – he pipes up “Correct!”. Stalin notes that he had opposed the demand by the Leningrad Committee, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who are now at odds with Stalin, for Trotsky to be removed from the Politburo and the Communist Party: “They demanded blood, but I was opposed to blood-letting, thinking, before long what would be left of the party.” What indeed.

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Today -100: December 29, 1925: Murderous delirium is the worst kind of delirium

With the Radical members of the French Cabinet rebelling against PM Aristide Briand’s financial proposals, Briand threatens to throw them out of the Cabinet and form a new one in alliance with the Right Center.

Mexico bans marijuana which, we are informed, produces “murderous delirium. Its addicts often become insane.”

The District of Columbia bans horses on four major streets.

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Today -100: December 28, 1925: You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to live in that town, Philadelphia, anyway

Smedley Darlington Butler, former Philadelphia police chief, gives a blistering speech to the Adult Bible Classes Federation of Pennsylvania, calling Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick a “disloyal chief” who fired him because he insisted on going after big people as well as “little dummies” for Prohibition violations (you could be forgiven for reading his remarks about crime and thinking that Prohibition was the only law on the books). He says of Kendrick’s claim that he fired him because he didn’t give him proper respect: “No, I didn’t. I should have pulled his noise.” He says the fundamental issue today is “whether we Americans are to be governed by a lot of bootleggers and naturalized foreigners.” He bitches that the people of Philly (Pheople?) didn’t support him and are “getting about what they deserve.”

In the audience is Gov. Gifford Pinchot, who is said to want Butler to succeed him as governor, a plan Butler explicitly disclaims. Pinchot says Butler showed that a Man could enforce the law “even in Philadelphia.”

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Today -100: December 27, 1925: Turkish delight

The new Turkish Civil Code ends the right of husbands to unilaterally divorce their wives. Divorce will now be granted only by courts and only for cause – insanity, desertion, infidelity etc. This will not be applied retroactively to annul, say, the divorce that Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk decreed for himself in August.

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Today -100: December 26, 1925: Of greetings and non-pardons

German politicians including Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann (whose name the NYT gets wrong) send messages of Christmas greetings to the US, which were recorded on wax discs and broadcast on US radio stations. Americans were not used to hearing the voices of European leaders. The records also have songs from the Berlin State Opera. Part of the program was recorded in Stuttgart on a piano wire by the telegrapone process

California Gov. Friend Richardson rejects the practice of giving Christmas pardons, saying Californians will “enjoy this sacred day better with the knowledge that a score of murderers, robbers and pickpockets have not been turned loose upon them.”

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Today -100: December 25, 1925: If sorcery is outlawed, only outlaws will have sorcery

Pres. Harding’s widow Florence, who died a year ago, burned his papers after his death, we are just now hearing. Let the conspiracy theories begin!

A Mississippi grand jury indicts Coahoma County Sheriff Dr. S. W. Glass and 3 deputies for their role (unspecified here) in the lynching of a black man, Lindsey Coleman, after he was acquitted of murder.

Turkey bans sorcery.

A Christmas party hosted by the Italian gang at the Adonis Social and Athletic Club, a Brooklyn speakeasy, is rudely interrupted by the White Hand Gang and its leader, Richard “Peg-Leg” Lonergan. Tipped off in advance, the Italians and their special visiting guest Alfonse Capone kill four of the White Handers. Capone kills Lonergan personally and I guess the Italians keep Lonergan’s peg-leg as a trophy. This is the Adonis Club Massacre, although you’d think Christmas Massacre would have been better. It’s Capone’s first “massacre.” Capone will tell police that he was helping out as... the doorman.

Headline of the Day -100:

A heart attack, not some sort of Port Huron wicker man situation.

The Club Alabam’, off Broadway, offers a very blackface Xmas. Dinner de Luxe for 3 bucks, 6-9 pm, dancing from 10; god knows what happens between 9 & 10. Probably not a massacre.

The NYT Sunday Magazine will have, I guess this upcoming Sunday, an article on the Rhinelander v. Rhinelander trial.

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Today -100: December 24, 1925: Wherein is revealed the pest of our age

Pope Pius declares a new holiday (yay!): the Feast of Christ the King. The idea is that it will remind people of that obscure 1st-century chatterbox and combat “the pest of our age,” laicism, which lowers Christianity to the level of other religions, you know, the false ones. Also, the Catholic Church should have “independence from civil power.”

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler claims he resigned as Philadelphia’s director of public safety not because he was ordered to by the Marines or because Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick had fired his ass, but because Kendrick demanded that he “lay off the big places” in Prohibition raids. He had wanted to padlock the Ritz-Carlton; places like that will be important to the city’s finances in the sesquicentennial year. The Smedster withdraws his resignation from the Marines.

The Ku Klux Klan, pissed off at the Salt Lake City ordinance against mask-wearing, protests against someone wearing false whiskers – FALSE WHISKERS! – while collecting for the poor dressed as Santa Claus. So Santa will no longer be allowed to stalk the streets of Salt Lake in disguise.

The NYT responds to American Federation of Labor Pres. William Green’s screed against Italian Fascism by suggesting that it’s American unions that are the real dictators. “John L. Lewis is the Mussolini of the United Mine Workers”, it says, for refusing to submit the coal strike to arbitration. And not just here: “England is threatened by the unsocial, uneconomic and anti-national exactions of labor unions.”

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Today -100: December 23, 1925: But I can still spit in their eye

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler has been on leave from the Marines for two years in order to be director of safety (police chief) for Philadelphia. He’s militarized the cops, encouraged them to shoot “bandits,” armed firemen, and extended his Prohibition raids to the Ritz-Carlton and other major hotels, putting him at odds with politicians, including Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick. But he has been refused permission to extend his leave, which ends next week; he has orders to go to San Diego. He even went to Washington to ty to persuade Coolidge to change his mind, but Coolidge wouldn’t see him. He previously threatened to defy his orders to return to the Marines, but backed down. Now he reverses again and resigns from the Marines. So he’s a little surprised to learn, an hour later, that Mayor Kendrick has fired his ass. He tells reporters, “Now we are in the open. If the mayor fires me, I’ll be nothing after January 1. I’ll be neither a marine nor a policeman. But I can still spit in their eye.”

The American Federation of Labor warns unionists to oppose Fascist infiltration as strongly as they do Communists. AFL Pres. William Green says “Fascismo is endeavoring to instill that blighting philosophy among the people of every nation.”

Pres. Coolidge accepts the League of Nations invitation to join in preparing for a disarmament conference. 

Russia and Turkey sign a peace treaty. It’s only for three years.

The NYT suggests that Mussolini’s “Brilliant evocations of the glorious Roman past and of a glorious future may be a way of winning popular acquiescence in a galling present.”

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Today -100: December 22, 1925: We must choose between slavery and vodka

Some Italians claim that Mussolini’s purported intention to declare Italy an empire, which was reported as breaking news a couple of days ago – and a week before that – actually meant a spiritual and cultural rather than a territorial empire. The Italian embassy in the US calls the empire reports absurd, absolutely fantastic, and misleading.

The All-Russian Communist Congress divides over whether to suppress the kulaks. Bukharin is offended that the radicals, led by Zinoviev, take the highly unusual step of demanding the right to submit a minority report. Stalin says a few things I don’t understand, including “we must choose between slavery and vodka.”

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Today -100: December 21, 1925: Of the government of Wall Street, distressing methods, and battleships

Benjamin Gitlow, the Communist leader pardoned by NY Gov. Al Smith last week, gives a speech calling for foreign industrial and farm workers living in the US to unite with negroes to “overthrow the government of Wall Street.”

The French Chamber of Deputies approves PM Aristide Briand’s Syrian policy. Killing Syrian, his policy is killing Syrians, or as he puts it, “It was a cruel thing that France was obliged to maintain order by distressing methods.”

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin premieres at The Bolshoi.

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Today -100: December 20, 1925: Very little future for aviation

Noted futurist H.G. Wells, asked to write for Airways magazine on the future of air travel, responds that as he has found it “unpunctual, untrustworthy and inconsiderate to the ordinary passenger, there is very little future for aviation.”

We are also informed that British planes in the future will be made of metal, since the shortage of wood during the war restricted production. Another story today says houses will also be made of metal in Britain, because bricklayers are refusing to speed up to meet the housing shortage.

Jewish groups in Hungary oppose the World Court reviewing the Hungarian law restricting the proportion of “races” in colleges to their proportion in the population. They’re afraid to base a challenge to the law on outsiders and on the Treaty of Trianon, the much-hated treaty imposed on Hungary after the Great War. 

A Kansas judge issues a state-wide injunction against Klan parades in regalia.

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Today -100: December 19, 1925: Wiggle wiggle

During the Senate debate on the US joining the World Court, Sen. Irvin Lenroot (R-Wisc.) points out that the Republican 1924 platform called for just that. William Borah (R-Idaho) responds “if a man could be conceived who thought this was an injurious proposition or detrimental to his country and would still vote for it because his platform said so, he would be the slimiest creature that ever wiggled his was through the United States Senate.” A simple no would have sufficed.

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Today -100: December 18, 1925: Of insubordination, fascist menaces, and Christmas trees

Col. Billy Mitchell is convicted of insubordination for expressing views on military aviation contrary to those of his superiors and is suspended for 5 years.

The French government thinks the “Fascist menace” is dissipating. It helps that the French Fascists and the monarchists are now fighting (literally), with the latter now finally united behind a single pretender to the crown, from the Bourbon line of the royal family (ousted in 1830) rather than the Orléans line (1848).

Italy’s commissioner for South Tyrol, which was awarded to Italy after the Great War, reverses a decree, part of Italy’s attempt to suppress the German language and culture, banning Christmas trees.

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Today -100: December 17, 1925: ‘Tis now Ankara’s turn to speak

Two far-right German monarchists, one a petty criminal who loves him some Hitler and one a former mental patient, are arrested for a plot to assassinate Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann. One of them told a lawyer about it and the lawyer told the police.

The League of Nations gives Britain a mandate over Iraq and sets a border between it and Turkey, which is not best pleased and still claims Mosul, responding “‘Tis now Ankara’s turn to speak.” Britain thinks there probably won’t be a war with Turkey. Probably. 

New York City Mayor-Elect Jimmy Walker pledges to make NY a clean city. Supposedly there’s been an influx of gamblers since the election, believing NY would be an open city.

Sir Basil Thomson, head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch during the Great War, is arrested in Hyde Park “committing an act in violation of public decency” with a Miss Thelma de Lava, which doesn’t sound like a real name but it is the one she gives the police. He also gives a fake name; both are bailed but fail to appear as ordered.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals awards the black servants of “turfman” John T. Hughes the money he left them in his will, rejecting the claims of his (white) relatives. So Ellen Davis, a former slave in her 80s, is now the richest black woman in the South. Her son, who is also Hughes’s son, also gets a legacy.

The State Democratic Women’s Association of Texas will not support Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson for re-election. Nor will the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. I don’t think any women’s group supports her. The president of the Texas branch of the League of Women Voters is annoyed that people outside Texas think Ferguson’s election was a victory for women.

Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy is published.

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Today -100: December 16, 1925: With a friendly smile, respectful bow and doffing of the hat

Special constables seize their barracks in Belfast to demand compensation for their units being disbanded under the Irish agreement. Other cops in Derry & elsewhere in Northern Ireland refuse to hand in arms and equipment.

The Texas Textbook Commission removes references to evolution from a biology textbook.

People in Edineţi, a town in Bessarabia, which was annexed by Romania in 1918, will be required to salute Romanian officers, “with a friendly smile, respectful bow and doffing of the hat.” In the meantime, the Town Commandant’s hat will be paraded through the streets on a stick so the Edineţihoovians can practice the smiling, bowing, and doffing.

The Nacionalista & Democratic Parties of the Philippines Legislature agree to join together to fight for Filipino autonomy, in response to Coolidge’s State of the Union call for strengthening the power of the governor-general against the Legislature (and also the veto by Gov.-Gen. Leonard Wood last week of a bill for an independence plebiscite, but the NYT kinda missed that one).

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Today -100: December 15, 1925: Oh sure it looks easy now that you’ve explained it

Kip and Alice Rhinelander have scattered to the winds. Not the same winds, of course. He’s making sure she can’t serve him to sue for support, she’s, I dunno, escaping reporters? Anyway, the Ku Klux Klan are searching for her in Florida hotels in which she’s thought to be staying. Not ominous at all. (Update: she’s actually still in New Rochelle; the NYT helpfully provides her address.)

The Republican Senate leadership decide not to ostracize newly elected young Robert La Follette Jr. after all. They recognize him as a Republican and put him on three Senate committees.

Harry Houdini’s new show opens at the 44th Street Theatre. The entire second act is devoted to exposing the ticks used by mediums. Some of the audience members are annoyed that he asked questions of them based on letters his assistant took from coats in the cloakroom.

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Today -100: December 14, 1925: His favorite

Headline of the Day -100:

Oops. 9 years old. “Rose, he said, had always been his favorite.” His less-favored children must be wondering what’s in store for them.

Incidentally, Rudyard Kipling has been sick, but is now on the mend. This has been worth something like a dozen news articles over the last couple of weeks. It’s always a little weird when the NYT mounts a death-watch. Kipling won’t actually die anytime soon.

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Today -100: December 13, 1925: Of cars, cavaliers, empires, and mosques

Yugoslav Prime Minister Nikola Pašić’s car runs over and kills a teacher. Later in the day, the acting foreign minister’s car also runs over a woman. Ice, they say, and definitely not some sort of sick competition.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot sets an execution date for William Cavalier, who was 14 when convicted of murdering his grandmother.

It is hinted that Mussolini might promote Italy to an empire rather than a mere kingdom in the new year. The new emperor would, of course, be the spineless Victor Emmanuel, not Moose, perhaps the reason this never came to pass.

A mosque is being built in Paris, more or less the first in mainland France. The Grande Mosquée de Paris will open next year in the 5th arrondissement. 

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Today -100: December 12, 1925: No additional punishment would act as a deterrent to those who would preach an erroneous doctrine of government

The League of Nations invites the US (and other non-members Germany and Russia) to join a committee to prepare for a disarmament conference. 

NY Gov. Al Smith pardons Benjamin Gitlow, the former Socialist state assemblyperson convicted of “criminal anarchy” in 1920 for stuff published in a newspaper of which he was business manager. Smith says he’s been “sufficiently punished for a political crime”* and in prison “has meekly submitted to the sovereign power of the State,” which I’d consider an insult if anyone said it about me. Smith says “no additional punishment would act as a deterrent to those who would preach an erroneous doctrine of Government.” Gitlow will run for governor next year as the Workers Party candidate. The Comintern will expel him from the Communist Party in 1929 as insufficiently radical and yadda yadda yadda, he’ll turn anti-Communist by the late ‘30s and write I Confess: The Truth About American Communism in 1940.

*I failed to notice the significance of this, but Gitlow will point out next week that Smith “admitted in his pardon that there is such a thing in this country as imprisonment for political offenses.”

In Prussia, Robert Grütte-Lehder of Gen. Ludendorff’s Nazi-adjacent German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) is on trial for murdering Heinrich Dammers of that same group in 1923 for supposedly passing party secrets to the Communists. This is the first Berlin trial for the “Feme murders” (Fememorde – punishment murders) in which far-right groups cleaned house. c.30 officers and such are said to be awaiting similar trials. Grütte-Lehder, “resembling an east side gangster,” accuses DVFP party leaders and Reichstag members of inducing him to kill Dammers, giving him a letter – an actual letter – authorizing it.  (Update: I think it actually just tells him to establish order in the Stettin branch of the party, which Grütte-Lehder says amounts to the same thing.)

The Italian Chamber of Deputies passes Mussolini’s labor law abolishing all labor unions except Fascist “syndicates,” which he says are different from Socialist labor unions in that they are based on class collaboration. Strikes will be banned in favor of mandatory arbitration. The Duck tells the Chamber that this should be considered a war measure “because I consider the Italian nation in a permanent state of war.” “Even as controversies are not permitted at the front in wartime, so now we must realize the maximum national efficiency.” A NYT editorial gives this, um, illuminating analysis: “Italy’s new labor laws would indicate that the hen of dictatorship has been brooding over the eggs of radicalism and, oddly enough, has hatched out chickens shaped in the Fascist image.”

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Today -100: December 11, 1925: Punishing rebels

Republicans in the House of Representatives who didn’t back Nicholas Longworth for Speaker or didn’t vote for a new House rule to kill bills not supported by the Republican Party leadership – mostly Wisconsin Progressives – are ousted from committee chairmanships; some are expelled from their committees.

 

Women’s organizations in New York want a minimum marriage age, which is currently 12 years old with parental consent under common law.

Lady Nancy Astor, MP offers to pay to send any British Communist (and his family) (she assumes it’s a he) who thinks Soviet Russia is so great to Russia if they will live there two years to enjoy “the joys of Bolshevist rule.” She is not offering to pay their return fare.

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Today -100: December 10, 1925: Budget!

Coolidge calls for a budget of $3,494,222,308. This would include $76m for aviation and $22m for prohibition enforcement. But he wants states to pay for their own damn roads.

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Today -100: December 9, 1925: In the right direction

Calvin Coolidge sends Congress his State of the Union address (not yet called that). He calls for joining the World Court because “Wars do not spring into existence. They arise from small incidents and trifling irritations which can be adjusted by an international court.” He wants to send power from the federal government to the states, but mostly, he says, “we are going in the right direction. The country does not appear to require radical departures from the policies already adopted so much as it needs a further extension of these policies and the improvement of details.” He says negroes “should be protected from all violence,” without using the word “lynching.” One state he doesn’t want to send more power to is the Philippines, where he wants the governor general to have even more power “so that he will not be so dependent upon the local legislative body to render effective our efforts to set an example of the sound administration and good government, which is so necessary for the preparation of the Philippine people for self-government under ultimate independence.”

France arrests 3 Englishmen as leaders of a spy circle trying to steal French aviation secrets. This may or may not be retaliation after the British supposedly arrested French spies trying to steal British aviation secrets.

Headline of the Day -100:

Tick tick tick tick...

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Today -100: December 8, 1925: Of stranglers, pearl-colored spats, and uniforms

Russia arrests 15 Czarist-era executioners, who between them strangled 500+ revolutionaries secretly in a cellar. I’m surprised the arrests didn’t happen much earlier.

The 69th session of Congress opens (not counting the special session back in March). And the big thing you need to know about it, evidently, is that Robert La Follette Jr. took the oath of office wearing pearl-colored spats, which “were commented on smilingly by old Senators, who recalled that the elder La Follette also was partial to spats but of a less conspicuous shade.” Nicholas Longworth, husband of Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Theodore, takes over as speaker of the House. Alice looks on from the visitors’ gallery, wearing... oh, who cares what she was wearing. She is sitting next to Mary Borah, wife of Sen. William Borah, the actual father of the child Alice gave birth to in February. Awkward. 

The increasingly fascist Society of Awakening Hungarians adopts a uniform, much like the Italian Fascists, and adopts a battle axe as their emblem, this, I think:

There may be push-back from the government on the whole uniform thing.

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Today -100: December 7, 1925: Of wars, barbaric noises, and outrages

Former Texas Gov. James Ferguson writes in his weekly newspaper Ferguson’s Forum, mostly known for featuring advertisements from companies wanting government contracts and other favors, “The war is on.”

Siegfried Wagner, son of composer Richard, calls jazz “barbaric noise” and “nigger rhythmics” turned out by “half-civilized negroes.” In 1913 Kaiser Wilhelm banned army officers from dancing the tango, “this nigger grotesque.” Everyone’s a critic.

At a meeting to protest “the dismemberment of Ireland,” Éamon de Valera calls the decision not to change the border between North & South Ireland the greatest outrage ever committed by England against the Irish people. Surely he can think of a few greater outrages committed by England against the Irish people.

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Today -100: December 6, 1925: I do and I don’t

Texas Attorney Gen. Dan Moody, who is not a fan of the governors Ferguson, seems to kill the idea of a special session to impeach Gov. Miriam, saying it’s against public policy to have a privately funded session. So a special session could only be held if the legislators pay their own expenses, and we know that ain’t gonna happen. But if the impeachment movement is sputtering, it’s probably because the governors Ferguson have been leaking that they won’t be running for re-election (she will, though, and will lose humiliatingly to Dan Moody). Also, the grand jury has yet to weigh in.

Mussolini calls for schools to be “inspired by the ideals of Fascism.” Aren’t they all? “It is not necessary to burden the mind with infinite notions which can never be remembered, which leave nothing worth while.”

German Chancellor Hans Luther and his Cabinet resign. No one else wants the job, so Luther will probably retain it.

The Rhinelander v. Rhinelander jury refuses to annul their marriage, denying Kip’s charge that Alice R. tricked him into marriage by racial fraud. Alice will now demand alimony and attorneys’ fees. A reporter asks if she still loves her husband and she says “I do and I don’t.” Jurors insist to reporters that racial prejudice did not enter into their deliberations.

So the Rhinelanders are still married but won’t, I think, ever meet again. His lawyers will appeal the ruling for a couple of year and fail. In 1929 she’ll sue Kip’s father Philip for alienation of affections (Kip was legally obligated to support his wife, but didn’t). He’ll try to get a Nevada divorce, but New York State won’t recognize it because she was not present. She will then file suit in NY for separation, finally forcing the family to negotiate with her, paying her $31,500 (most of which went to her lawyers, as is the custom) plus $3,800 a year in exchange for an NDA and giving up the right to use the name “Rhinelander” (it will, however, appear on her grave stone). Leonard died in 1936 at 32 of pneumonia. He didn’t re-marry; neither did Alice, who died in 1989.

W. E. B. DuBois will point out that “if Rhinelander had used this girl as concubine or prostitute, white America would have raised no word of protest; white periodicals would have printed no headlines, white ministers would have said no single word. It is when he legally and decently marries the girl that Hell breaks loose and literally tears the pair apart.”

There’s a detail I haven’t managed to shoehorn in yet: 40 years before all this, Kip’s uncle William (brother of Philip) married an Irish servant, to a horrified social and familial reaction that will sound familiar. The family sent a lawyer to try to bribe his wife to go back to Ireland. William shot the lawyer in the shoulder, which resulted in his death 6 months later, but William was never charged.

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Today -100: December 5, 1925: Of verdicts and family traditions

The jury in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander reaches a verdict! In 12 hours! We don’t know what it is!

NY Gov. Al Smith becomes a grandfather (assuming he wasn’t already one). The news is a surprise because no one knew that his son Arthur eloped last year when he was 17 and a student at the Christian Brothers Academy. His older brother Al Jr. also eloped last year.

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Today -100: December 4, 1925: Of loans, indemnities, borders, and textbooks

Belgium is negotiating a major loan in New York to pay off its war debt, and Belgians will be asked, under a proposal by the president of the Bank of Brussels, to work free for a half hour per week at overtime rates, the money going to service the debt.

A League of Nations commission determines that Greece is entirely to blame for the recent War of the Stray Dog and must pay Bulgaria an indemnity of 20 million levas, which is the equivalent of some money, for material losses; it also recommends an additional 10 million levas for injuries and deaths of soldiers.

The Irish Free State, Northern Ireland & Great Britain come to an agreement on the Irish border, which is not to change it and indeed to suppress the report of the boundary commission. Ulster intransigence wins again, I guess. As part of the overall agreement, Britain will stop trying to get the Free State to pay any of Britain’s war debt (disputes over how to calculate it means the Free State has never actually paid any of it), and Ireland will take over payment of compensation for the Civil War, which means it has to pay for its own oppression (as was the custom).

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson’s opponents have another potential ground for impeachment: a possibly corrupt deal for elementary school spelling books, which was made after she appointed her husband to the Textbook Commission, which then mysteriously awarded the contract to the highest bidder.

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Today -100: December 3, 1925: We don’t want hats!

Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera supposedly gives up the dictatorship of Spain and dissolves the “Directorate” he set up in ‘23. He does not restore the Cortes or the Constitution or end press censorship. 

Dueling is still a thing in Germany, or at any rate Prussia. Junker aristo Bogislav von Somnitz is sentenced to 2½ years in prison for having killed a duelee in one of four (4, count ’em, 4) duels he held in a single day. The other 3 duelists will get 6 months in prison and the seconds 1 month. Somnitz had been assaulted at a hunting party by the baron who hosted it and the other 3 because of his refusal to participate in monarchist plots and to hide insurgents on his property. Naturally he challenged them. The first 3 duels were bloodless, mostly because the sun hadn’t come up yet, but it had by the time he faced Lt. von Kohl, who bled to death. The judge rules that Somnitz was not guilty of premeditated murder because he shot at his opponents’ legs and anyway the insult to his honor required a duel in response. 

A Turkish man who put up posters objecting to the government’s ban on fezes is hanged. Elsewhere, a mob demonstrates in front of the governor’s house in Marash shouting “We don’t want hats!”

Young Kip Rhinelander’s lawyer, retired NY Supreme Court justice Isaac Mills, sums up. Some quotes:

You might as well bury this young man six feet deep in the soil of the old churchyard where his early American ancestors sleep as to condemn him to be chained for eternity to this mulatto woman.

There is not a father among you – and I tried to fill this jury box with fathers [The jury is all-male, as was almost always the case in NY until jury duty became mandatory for women in the ‘70s] – who would not rather see his son in his casket than wedded to this mulatto woman. There is room in this fair county for blacks as well as whites, but the decent blacks object to this marriage, as do the decent whites.

He will hail your verdict if you find a verdict for him, as a person on the steps of the scaffold welcomes a reprieve from the governor.

He admits Alice was humiliated by “that indecent exhibition in the jury room,” but 

with the buoyance of her race she will regain her spirits. ... Let her gain a husband of her own race and find happiness with him [like her sister Emily,] who without vaulting ambition wed within her own color and kind.

Vaulting ambition is the worst kind of ambition.

Mills says Kip had the intelligence of a 14- or 15-year-old when he met Alice and a “physical infirmity” – is that how he’s referring to stuttering? – so he fell under her spell, and “mind you, women of her race mature earlier.”

He calls on the jury to free poor Kip “from this horrid, unnatural, absurd, terrible union.”

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Today -100: December 2, 1925: Of occupations and research

British troops evacuate (finally) the North Rhineland (Cologne and environs). Unlike the French when they de-occupied the Ruhr, the British are doing it without making any triumphalist fuss.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover complains at the lack of spending in the US on fundamental scientific research. He claims we spend ten times as much on cosmetics.

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Today -100: December 1, 1925: They must think I’m a bird

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson refuses to call a special session of the Legislature, calling those requesting it “wolves” who “want to gather here and tear me apart.” “They tried to camouflage [the special session] as an inquiry into the foot and mouth disease and tick eradication. They must think I’m a bird. It’s my feet, my mouth, and my eradication they want.” Her feet? Her mouth?

Today the governor – Jim, not Ma, who quit for the day at noon – sat in the governor’s chair and talked to reporters, “using language in reference to the anti-Ferguson group that no lady Governor would think of, let alone use.”

The lady governor demands that Amon Carter, publisher of The Fort Worth Star Telegram, resign from the Board of Directors of the Texas Technological College because, she claims, he was drunk at a football game.

Hungary will ban foreign jazz bands after December 31st, not because the government hates jazz, which it probably does, but to protect native jazz bands.

Alice Rhinelander will not testify. Her lawyer Lee Davis, who last week made her strip for the jury, says “It struck me that it was just time the world was through with the slime of this case.” Alice is at the visibly-weeping-all-the-time phase of the trial. Davis, in his closing argument, accuses the opposition of attempting to smear everyone, from Alice’s mother to the chauffeur, who was ordered by a court to pay child support for his illegitimate child, which has what to do with his having told Kip that Alice’s father is black?

Headline of the Day -100:

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