Today -100: May 16, 1923: Of dyes, floggings, and the most powerful medium of influence over the people

France seizes 4 dye and chemical factories in the Ruhr.

Florida bans the flogging of convicts.

At a Federal Trade Commission hearing into the monopolization of the movie industry by Famous Players-Lasky, Thomas Edison says movies, and therefore who controls them, are super-important: “There is nothing so powerful as motion pictures in influencing people. ... Whoever controls the motion picture industry controls the most powerful medium of influence over the people.” And it’ll just get more powerful. In 20 years there won’t even be books in schools, just motion pictures.

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Today -100: May 15, 1923: Premier Mussolini has demonstrated evolutionary progress

Headline of the Day -100:  

Or so he says to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance holding its annual congress in Rome. Pres. Carrie Chapman Catt says “Premier Mussolini has demonstrated evolutionary progress. From doubt about women suffrage, he has arrived at the conviction that it cannot long be postponed.” However, the suffrage he is proposing is for “several classes of women” and is only in local elections, with national ones maybe later. Women will get the local vote in 1925 aaaaaand have it taken away again in 1928.

The Florida State Senate adopts a resolution that Darwinism, atheism & agnosticism should not be taught in public schools.

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Today -100: May 14, 1923: Making out like bandits

China gives the kidnapping bandits everything they want: withdrawal of government troops from the area, absorption of the bandits into the army. I assume there’s a cash component as well.

The German government forbids its citizens in the Rhineland and the Ruhr traveling on on trains run by the French or Belgians. Also, towns in the Ruhr are forbidden from paying fines levied by the occupiers and individuals are forbidden to apply to them for drivers licenses.

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Today -100: May 13, 1923: Of putsches, bridges, and kidnappers

In Hamburg, several generals and others are arrested for planning a putsch to overthrow the Hamburg government and hopefully inspire a national putsch.

A bridge over the Rhine-Heren Canal is blown up, nearly taking out a French troop train. The French respond by arresting the burgomaster of Osterfeld and fining the town 100 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money.

The ultimatum that the foreign ambassadors gave the Chinese government to obtain the release of the people kidnapped from the Shanghai-Peking Express expires, but 16 or 17 foreigners, including 5 Americans, are still in captivity. Plus some Chinese people, but of course they don’t count.

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Today -100: May 12, 1923: Nice work if you can get it

Bavaria is under martial law, because “Hittler [sic], who is rapidly losing his popularity,” may be planning a putsch.

Famous motion picture canine Prince Ski is dead. He was paid $30 a day “and his specialty was strolling through gardens with richly gowned women.”

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Today -100: May 11, 1923: One must have the courage to deliver Europe from the Bolshevist plague

Vatslav Vorovsky, the Soviet delegate to the Lausanne Conference, is assassinated in the restaurant of the Hotel Cécil, and two other Russians attached to the mission and dining with him are wounded in the attack. The assassin then hands his gun to the head waiter and tells him to call the police. He is Maurice Conradi, a Swiss citizen who served in the Russian military before and during the war and the White Army during the civil war. His father and uncle, he says, died of starvation and Russian cruelty (or it may have been that his father and brother were executed). “This evening I have done an act of justice which I do not regret, for one must have the courage to deliver Europe from the Bolshevist plague.” The Swiss Fascists, who had ordered Vorovsky to leave Switzerland, deny any connection to the murder. Russia blames Switzerland which, not having invited any Russian delegates to the conference, declined to give them any protection.

Conradi and his confederate Arkady Polunin will be tried in November. They’ll use the trial to attack the Soviet government and will be acquitted, though Conradi will be ordered to pay the costs of the trial. Russia will cut diplomatic relations. Conradi will continue to live in Switzerland for a bit, then move to France, join the French Foreign Legion, and die in 1947.

Pathé objects to the Motion Picture Commission censoring Good Riddance, a lost, I think, Hal Roach comedy short about a man trying to get rid of a dog his girlfriend objects to. The censor insisted on cutting a scene in which the dog is thrown out of an airplane and “all views of man’s leg exposed where trouser is pulled off by dog at dance” and a scene of a a fuse attached to a dog’s tail. She says these are inhuman and incite crime. Pathé Exchange suggests she didn’t realize it’s a comedy. It points out that the dog survives being thrown out of an airplane, landing unharmed in the back seat of a car. “We fail to see where the element of inhumanity enters.” It notes that films involve exaggerated actions: “For instance, one does not ordinarily hang a Chinaman out of the window by his hair, yet in this picture such a scene is shown.” And as for the naked leg, “It is not clear whether this scene is declared to be inhuman or would tend to incite to crime.” The case is now going to court. Gotta say, this film does not sound like a laff riot. Incidentally, the star is James Parrott, better known as a director of many Laurel & Hardy pictures. And he was Charley Chase’s brother, which I did not know.

(Update: an appellate court will reverse the Motion Picture Commission’s cuts to the film.)

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Today -100: May 10, 1923: It is none of our business whether Christ went to heaven or not

A French military court in the Ruhr sentences to death a German who led a gang which dynamited railroads, the first time the French have done so, despite the many, many threats. Supposedly the dynamiters were paid by Krupp (I think not). The gang members are also found guilty of (gasp, horror) spreading anti-French propaganda.

A US District Court voids the parts of the Volstead Act limiting how much liquor a doctor can prescribe to one pint per 10 days. That’s for doctors to decide, sez the judge.

Irish Free State Prez William Cosgrove rejects Éamon de Valera’s peace terms and declines further communication with him, including the personal conference the fugitive future president suggested.

At the Lausanne Conference, Turkey rejects a suggestion that they take the next day, Ascension Day, off. Riza Nur Bey says that would be an infringement of Turkish sovereignty somehow. “It is none of our business whether Christ went to heaven or not, nor do we care on what day he went there.” Meanwhile, the Russian delegates, who showed up without being invited to the conference, are being guarded by the police because of threats by the Swiss Fascists. How well guarded, we shall see.

Responding to the US decision to bar all ships entering US territorial waters from carrying liquor, even if it’s locked up, the House of Commons votes 184 to 128 to require passenger ships entering British waters to carry liquor. The bill is a jape, and won’t go any further.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word jape before.

The New York City Memorial Day parade will feature Fascists marching in the Italian Fascist uniform. They were invited by the American Legion.

New dancing record: 160 hours & 55 minutes. I’m bored; can we do phone-booth stuffing now?

Headline of the Day That Sounds Dirty But Isn’t -100: 

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Today -100: May 9, 1923: That smile we know so well

Britain issues a snippy ultimatum to Russia. It will break off trade relations in 10 days unless Russia stops doing anti-British propaganda in India, Afghanistan and Persia; withdraws its refusal to receive official British complaints about the trials of religious figures; and accepts liability for offenses to individuals and ships (I guess they sunk a fishing boat?). And they complain that the British agent in Moscow has been subjected to “studied insolence,” which is the worst kind of insolence. The Tory government is obviously looking for an excuse to tear up the agreement Lloyd George made with Russia.

The French court-martial sentences Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach to 15 years. And a fine.  Other Krupp company directors (some of whom are out of reach in Germany proper) are sentenced to 10, 15, or 20 years. This is for the incident on March 31 when French soldiers tried to seize Krupp company automobiles and got into a fight with workers while, according to the military prosecutor, the directors looked on from inside “with that smile we know so well from the days when German officers smiled while French villages, farms and homesteads burned.” So their crime is... smirking in the first degree. The prosecutor says the blood of the German workers killed by the French soldiers is on the directors’ hands (no French soldiers were killed). Chancellor Cuno calls the sentence a contemptible travesty, which is the worst kind of travesty.

The NYPD arrest 807 men for witnessing an immoral performance. They’re driven to the police station where they give their names (Jones, Smith, Brown) and addresses (vacant lots, public buildings). I think this is the NYPD’s nose-thumbing response to a magistrate who released a bunch of people Monday, saying it’s not actually against the law to view a performance the police consider immoral.

Diplomats in China from the countries whose citizens were kidnapped from the Peking express demand that China pay the ransom demanded by the bandits (the US is specifically demanding that the Chinese government pay it). The diplomats threaten to impose an indemnity on China if anyone is still being held on the 12th, increasing every day after that.

New York Health Commissioner Frank Monaghan says women should wear a corset: “It lends support to vital organs which need bracing, thus permitting them to function properly without strain.” Also, it makes them super-hot, which is good for their mental health.

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Today -100: May 8, 1923: I can face prison myself

Harding says the “national heart, conscience and judgment” support joining the World Court. Really, every American wants to join, he’s pretty sure.

Lucy Aldrich is released, I guess, by the Chinese bandits who attacked the Peking Express and made off with many of its passengers. Or, not released, but left behind with other white women unable to keep up with the forced march. Some captives are still being held.

At the French court-martial of Baron Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of the Krupp conglomerate (by marriage; the “Krupp” in his name is from his wife), Krupp is asked why he returned to the Ruhr knowing he faced arrest instead of remaining in Germany so the French could call him a fugitive, as they clearly intended, and why he didn’t ask two other indicted Krupp directors to return with him. “Even though innocent I can face prison myself... but I cannot ask it of others to face prison for me.”

No one likes the painting Sir William Orpen painted for the Imperial War Museum, To The Unknown British Soldier in France. Critics hate it and the museum won’t take it. It looked something like this:

Orpen denies that it was ironic or something: “I painted the picture in all seriousness and humility.” Later on he painted out the emaciated soldiers and chubby cherubs and the museum finally accepted it.

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Today -100: May 7, 1923: Of train kidnappings, home sweet home, and broken treaties

France and Belgium reject Germany’s reparations proposals. They decide not to issue a joint reply with Britain. Not surprisingly, they want more money than Germany offered. They say there will be no talks until passive resistance ends, denying Germany’s claim that passive resistance is a spontaneous act of the people of the Ruhr instead of ordered by the German government, and say they won’t end the occupation until Germany pays up.

Lucy Aldrich, daughter of a former and sister-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., is kidnapped by bandits in China, along with 150 other train passengers, during an attack on the Shanghai-Peking Express. Or 300 passengers according to a different AP dispatch printed right below the first one. The bandits derail the train, shoot it up, and steal everything they can before marching their captives
 off into the night in their nightclothes.

The song “Home Sweet Home” (you know, “Be it ever so humble etc”) is 100 years old, and at least 15,000 people gather in Prospect Park to commemorate the occasion with a sing-song, because that’s what life was like before the internet.

8 Sioux tribes will sue the US for $700,000,000 for treaty violations. Stolen land, some containing extensive gold deposits, slaughtered game, the usual.

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Today -100: May 6, 1923: Of princes and exclusions

A NYT Sunday Magazine article on the Prince of Wales worries that the 28-year-old prince seems to have more interest in his horses, which he keeps falling off, than in marrying. Be careful what you wish for.

This week, unreported in the NYT, Canada’s Parliament passed a Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese people from entering the country except for university students, Canadian-born Chinese returning from abroad – if they’ve been absent less than two years – diplomats, and merchants (not including restauranteurs or laundry owners). Ethnic Chinese, including those born in Canada, have to register for an identity card. The act will be repealed in 1947.

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Today -100: May 5, 1923: How do you abolish a relic?

The new Lausanne Conference continues. Britain proposes that no foreigners be arrested in much of Turkey or their homes searched without permission of a non-Turkish judge.

The NY Legislature repeals the state law for enforcing the 18th Amendment. Prohibition enforcement in the state will now be entirely up to the feds. That’s if Gov. Al Smith signs the bill; he plans to hold hearings and pretend that he hasn’t already decided to sign it.

The NY Assembly passes Jimmy Walker’s bill to require the KKK and other non-incorporated groups to file membership lists with the secretary of state.

The All-Russian Church Council names Father Vedensky, the man who shepherded the unfrockification of Patriarch Tikhon, archbishop. It also abolishes relics, says bishops can get married now but clergy aren’t actually required to marry.

There’s a boycott of sugar because of high prices.

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Today -100: May 4, 1923: Of reparations, sacred struggles, long flights, and censorship

In the least surprising news ever, France and Belgium reject Germany’s reparations offer. They insist that Germany must give up the passive resistance campaign and agree to continued occupation. And pay much more money, of course.

The French will try by court-martial 2 Germans in Castrop (in the Ruhr) for cutting off the hair of women who fraternized with French soldiers.

The All-Russian Church Council unfrocks Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon (who is in prison awaiting trial), lifts his excommunication of the Soviet government, calls him a traitor, and abolishes the office of patriarch. The Council explains that Russia is the only government fighting capitalism, which is one of the 7 deadly sins, so “its struggle is a sacred struggle.”

Britain says that when Iraq joins the League of Nations, it will be given its independence (this will indeed happen, though not until 1932).

Two Navy lieutenants fly a monoplane 2,700 miles from Long Island to San Diego in only 27 hours. And an Army dirigible flies 800 miles non-stop.

The bill to repeal NY’s movie censorship fails narrowly in the NY Assembly.

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Today -100: May 3, 1923: Half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting

The “Clean Books” censorship bill dies in the NY Senate, getting only 15 votes. Leading the fight against it is future NYC mayor Jimmy Walker. “No woman was ever ruined by a book,” he says. He notes the same hypocrisy as with the hard-drinking supporters of the Volstead Act: “Some of the best tellers of shabby stories in this Senate have been worrying their hearts out during the debate today about somebody reading something which may not have been good for him or her.”

Germany proposes a total reparation figure of 30 billion marks, which is the equivalent of some money, in installments (funded by foreign loans) (and if those aren’t forthcoming???). This is contingent on no further seizures of securities. And passive resistance will continue as long as the occupation does.

When people are forced out of Mussolini’s government, such as the Catholic Party members last month, he tends to simply abolish their positions. So too the office of Undersecretary of Finance Minister Cesare Maria de Veechi, pushed out for a speech in which he said, “Everything could be right in Italy with half an hour’s martial law and half a minute’s rifle shooting.” He’s a general of the national militia (and helped lead the March on Rome), a position he isn’t leaving, so any such rifle shooting would be under his command. De Veechi says he wasn’t speaking for the government, just saying the direction he wanted it to take. Swell. He’ll be named governor of Italian Somaliland later this year.

The Irish Dáil Éireann, while ignoring Éamon de Valera’s peace proposal, votes that hunger-striking prisoners should not be released from prison. Two more rebels are executed.

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Today -100: May 2, 1923: Red is the prettiest color of putsches

The AP says this was the quietest May Day in years in Paris, except for the rioting and the possibly fatally stabbed cop. Just another Tuesday, really.

May Day also passes off quietly in Munich, despite Nazi posters warning of a possible “Red putsch.”

The fabled Delmonico’s Restaurant, where the elite meet to eat, well, met to et, unable to pay its rent, is seized by the cops.

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Today -100: May 1, 1923: Of parallels, high seas, May days, and tubes

Alva Belmont of the National Woman’s Party plans to set up a parallel congress of women to discuss the same issues as the real Congress. And issues the real Congress won’t discuss, like the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Supreme Court rules that the Volstead Act doesn’t apply to US ships on the high (ahem) seas.

Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor prez, says May Day doesn’t mean shit to American workers.

Romanian soldiers fight anti-Semitic students at the University of Bucharest. Students have also built barricades at the University of Jassy. And a bunch of Jewish students have been expelled from the University of Klausenberg after a fight, following what I’m sure was a fair process.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Same.

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Today -100: April 30, 1923: No work under bayonets

France threatens to send troops to reinforce the border between its Lebanon-Syria mandate and Turkey if the latter keeps mobilizing its troops on the border for some reason.

German workers are planning to make May Day an anti-French thing. Slogans: “Keep up the passive resistance in the Ruhr,” “Death rather than slavery,” “No work under bayonets.”

A black janitor at the University of Missouri in Columbia is taken from jail and lynched as white U students cheer. The UMo president says no students participated. Can’t imagine how he’d know that.

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Today -100: April 29, 1923: Of dancing and knitting

Speaking to a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Pres. Harding denies the rumor that the reason he supports the US joining the World Court is because he was told to by international bankers. Some of the transcript of the speech was censored by the White House because Harding was supposedly speaking not as president but as a fellow newspaper editor.

1,000 people are injured at Wembley Stadium when the crowd at a football match invades the field. King George is attending, and took advantage of the chaos to fuck a few geezers up, I’m assuming.

The mayor of Gary, Indiana, Roswell O. Johnson, is sentenced to 18 months in prison for protecting liquor interests in exchange for political favors.  A Gary sheriff & a judge get a year each and dozens of others get jail sentences & fines.

After that attack by Nazis on a Socialist meeting in Munich, Hitler declares the Nazis victims of “Red terror” and says “The hour of decision is struck. Our patience is exhausted.” Hitler, of course, was renowned for his patience. “The Soviets shall in future be answerable with their lives.” The Nazis are claiming that a Jew offered a Nazi 20 million marks, which is the equivalent of some money, to assassinate Hitler. Bavaria bans a Socialist meeting & parade on May Day to prevent violence.

The Michigan State Senate passes a bill for the sterilization of “mentally incompetent” people.

New dancing record:  130 hours (and still going) by Albert Kish. His partner, Bessie Edwards, collapsed at 66 hours but is back from the hospital. (There are also knitting marathons now, one of them anyway, but that one is called after 24 hours. It’s health ‘n safety gone mad.)

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Today -100: April 28, 1923: Of peace in Ireland?, rum, coke, Texas kluxers, and suspect airplane bears

Éamon de Valera issues a proclamation offering peace terms (after a day of house bombings and the like, just to show the IRA isn’t defeated, I guess, which it totally is). And the IRA suspends operations, but does not offer to give up its weapons, which the government says is the prerequisite for talks. De V’s terms: legitimate authority derives from the Irish people, that referenda will decide disputed questions, no loyalty oaths to the British king, etc.

Pres. Harding plans to declare a national emergency to use the Navy to stop rum-running in the Caribbean. There are some difficulties over whether he can actually do that and which department would pay for it (not us, sez the Navy).

France says it will seize all coke (er, the coal kind) in the Ruhr, with harsh penalties for anyone who gets in their way. As part of this, all public bathhouses will be closed.

Bavarian Nazis (a term which won’t be in use for some years, by the way, and not by the Nazis, but the policy of this blog is to call a Nazi a fucking Nazi) attack a Socialist meeting. Police give up on intervening in the violence when the Nazis start shooting.

Former US Sen. Henry Hollis (D-NH, 1913-19) is now a polygamist. He got a divorce in Bulgaria last year and then remarried in Italy, but now the government of Bulgaria has decided it doesn’t recognize the Unitarian church that granted him the divorce, and has closed the church.

During a concert in the Texas Legislature chamber performed by the St. John Orphanage for Negroes, 70 Klansmen in full regalia stroll in, presumably interrupting the music, hand some money to the chorus’s leader, then give a little speech about the principles of the Klan.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Suspect airplane bears are the worst kind of airplane bears.

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Today -100: April 27, 1923: Of simple Scots maids, women hunger striking and/or smoking

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Prince Albert, 27 – you know, the King’s Speech guy – at this point 3rd in line to the throne, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 22. The marriage is considered “modern” because he’s marrying a filthy commoner (her parents are only a Scottish earl and a countess, so I guess commoner but not commonest).

Éamon de Valera was not captured. The Irish Free State executes another rebel, but releases Nellie Ryan and Annie O’Neil, who were hunger-striking. Ryan is the sister-in-law of Defence Minister Richard Mulcahy.

The University of Maryland suspends 2 women students for smoking. The university president is now threatening never to let them back, because they’ve hired a lawyer.

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