Today -100: January 24, 1926: Poisoned mushrooms of lascivious shape and noxious odor are the worst kind of mushrooms

Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, the archbishop of Malines (Mechelen), Belgium, dies at 74. His open resistance to German occupation of Belgium during the Great War, including issuing a pastoral letter saying no obedience was owed to the occupiers, made him an important national symbol.

The British plan to force Maharajah Tukoji Rao Holkar III of Indore, an Indian princely state, to abdicate (this will happen next month). Last year Mumtaz Begum, who will be repeatedly called a “dancing girl,” escaped from his harem, blaming a nurse for the death of her female baby. She was taken in by a Muslim Bombay textile merchant. The maharajah sent men all the way to Bombay to take her back; they killed the merchant and injured her, but were fought off by... British officers with golf clubs? Really? One of the would-be kidnappers was captured and several put on trial, including an Indore general whose defense attorney was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the future first president of Pakistan. Tukoji will marry an American woman and mostly live in exile in France, dying in 1978 at 87. Begum will attempt an acting career in the US; it’s unclear what happened with her.

New York cops, including the bomb squad, guard a performance of Carlo Tresca’s play “L’Attentato [Attack/Assassination] a Mussolini,” which makes fun of The Duck. Tresca, a leftie who made all the right enemies, was convicted in the US in 1923, supposedly at the request of the Fascist government, for printing an ad for birth control in his newspaper, but had his sentence commuted by Coolidge. He’ll be assassinated in NYC by the Mafia, or possibly the NKVD – as I said, all the right enemies – in 1943.

A couple of religious fanatics from a Bordeaux, France sect called Our Lady of Tears, are on trial for attacking the Abbé Desnoyers, the village priest of Bombon, 600 km from Bordeaux, with sticks and staves because of sorcery. There were 10 women and 2 men in the mob but only the men are on trial. Evidently the priest ensorceled some migrating birds, as one does, which then flew over Bordeaux where they caused the growth of “poisoned mushrooms of lascivious shape and noxious odor, which gave the residents on the banks of the Gironde shameful diseases in various forms,” so clearly he had it coming.

A lost Polish colony is discovered by a roaming Polish anthropologist in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. It hadn’t been heard from since 1873. The original settlers are all dead; their descendants still speak Polish. I couldn’t discover what happened to them.

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Today -100: January 23, 1926: Is it any wonder that banditry, murder, bribery and corruption flourish?

New US Attorney General John G. Sargent tells a New York State Bar Association meeting that violating Prohibition law is a gateway drug, as it were, to the breaking of other laws. People who insist on their right to have a drink are “bribing” bootleggers to risk breaking the law, but what is to stop those bootleggers deciding there’s more money in robbing their customers, possibly with lethal force? “Is it any wonder that banditry, murder, bribery and corruption flourish?”

John Logie Baird has perfected television (aka televisor). It’s pretty blurry, but it does include sound.

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Today -100: January 22, 1926: Of filibusters and the Prince of Wales NOT falling off horses

The US Senate opponents of the World Court finally admit that that thing they’re doing is a filibuster, indeed, as John Harreld (R-OK) puts it, “a filibuster to prevent immature action.”

The Ku Klux Klan is running a pressure campaign against the World Court. Who knew kluxers could even write letters?

Man Bites Dog: 

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Today -100: January 21, 1926: I just assume there’s a German compound noun for that

The US and Mexico are having a dispute over what Mexico’s oil & land laws actually mean. Mexico denies the US accusation that they are retroactive, confiscatory and discriminate against US citizens. US SecState Frank Kellogg says they are too.

Bavarian courts acquit a lieutenant & a major who took part in the extra-judicial executions of 12 radicals near Munich in 1919. The judge insists that the Red revolution™ had to be put down, so the soldiers were suffering nervous strain from all that Red-revolution-putting-down, and this is evidently extenuating for murdering prisoners.

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Today -100: January 20, 1926: Of diplomatic relations & ministerial crises

Switzerland is working on restoring diplomatic relations with Russia. This is important because the big upcoming international disarmament conference will take place in Switzerland, and Russia is still peeved at the assassination in 1923 of Vatslav Vorovsky, Russia’s delegate to the Lausanne Conference, and the subsequent acquittal of his killers; it’s been boycotting Switzerland ever since. Russia is demanding a pension from Switzerland for Vorovsky’s daughter Nina, who is 17 or so.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: January 19, 1926: The ultimate end

Alfredo Rocco, Mussolini’s minister of justice, admits in an interview that the Duck’s attempts to bring the Aventine opposition deputies to heel is part of his efforts to abolish individualism. “We contend that society, and therefore the state, is the ultimate end and that the individual is only a means to achieve the noble purpose of the state.” “Only” is doing a lot of work there. “As a result we feel completely justified in suppressing those who would retard the progress of the state”.

France claims to have discovered, and may have actually discovered, secret German airplane factories in Sweden and Switzerland with German engineers and skilled workers.

Real-estate developer Oscar Konkle starts construction of the “Christian-Missionary Building” on Broadway & 122nd Street, which at 66 stories would be the world’s tallest building, 8 feet higher than the Woolworth Building. He’s building it in gratitude for the recovery of his son, who will be a missionary (Oscar is also associated with Billy Sunday), and it will contain a church alongside 4,500 hotel rooms renting at up to $21 a week and a hospital on the top floor. Konkle will kick back 10% of the earnings to a missionary base in British East Africa. Drinking, smoking, and Sunday newspapers will be banned from the building.

The project will be abandoned during the Depression and litigation following 5 deaths during the excavation.

Next week International Radio Broadcast Tests will be carried out. They’ve gotten transatlantic and navy ships to refrain from broadcasting during the tests but we’ll see if their appeals to rumrunners to maintain radio-silence are obeyed.

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Today -100: January 18, 1926: Of scandalous tissues of falsehoods and overcoats

New York Republicans hold a conference and agree to accede to much of Gov. Al Smith’s agenda, because they’re afraid that otherwise he’ll run for re-election.

Mussolini says the Aventine deputies, who yesterday attempted to end their boycott of the Chamber of Deputies only to be chased out, will only be allowed to return to their seats if they admit that their accusations against him are “a scandalous tissue of falsehoods,” accept the Fascist revolution as an accomplished fact and abandon all resistance to it, renounce anti-Fascists operating outside of Italy, etc.

The Soviet film agency invites Charlie Chaplin to come and make a film of Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat.”

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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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