Today -100: August 24, 1923: Of chancellors, flogging parties (and not the sexy kind), speculation, and boxers in the river

Neville Chamberlain is named chancellor the Exchequer after Reginald McKenna, PM Baldwin’s first choice, declines.

3 Klansmen from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma plead guilty to rioting (being part of a flogging party) and are sentenced to 2 years in prison, the first convictions in the state for such a crime.

France says food shortages in the Ruhr are due to speculation and certainly not from anything the French occupation may or may not have done.

A Klan meeting at Brilliant, West Virginia decides to “run [black boxer] Jack Johnson into the river” if he goes ahead with a boxing match in Mingo on Labor Day. I assume the match is with a white person.

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Today -100: August 23, 1923: Of alliterative bombers and petting parties... and worse

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The Barling Bomber. It’s super-expensive, slow, can’t achieve much height, has a short range, and will be scrapped as a failure.

Kansas Attorney Gen. C. C. Griffith says college towns must crack down on “petting parties and worse.”

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Today -100: August 22, 1923: Adopt a forward poise

German banks & corporations will be required to state – under oath – how much foreign currency they’re holding, so the government can seize a portion of it to stabilize the mark.

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Also touching heads or putting arms around the partner’s neck. They are also to “adopt a forward poise” and move continuously in one direction.

The Ku Klux Klan gives up plans for a parade in Steubenville, Ohio. The grand kleagle says “they had no desire to become targets for local gunmen.” The local gunmen are doubtless quite disappointed.

A restraining order is issued in New York against the Klan and lady Klan group Kamelia exercising corporate rights under its charter, which they took out claiming to be charitable groups not subject to laws requiring disclosure of members’ names.

Newsboys across the country are collecting pennies to be made into a statue of Warren G. Harding’s dog Laddie Boy. The Smithsonian has it now. It is not on display. I can’t help noticing the statue includes a (copper) penis.

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Today -100: August 21, 1923: Of rigid dirigibles, Rhenish indies, and nickels

The Navy’s ZR-1, the largest ever rigid dirigible (snicker) is launched. The previous largest ever airship, the ZR-2, blew up two years ago. The ZR-1, which will be called the USS Shenandoah, uses helium rather than hydrogen, so it probably won’t blow up... Instead, weather will be its nemesis. It will get badly torn up during a storm in 1924 and, after repairs, destroyed by another storm in 1925, with 14 dead. Crowds will rush to the Ohio crash site and loot it, as was the custom. Wikipedia says the schools in the district in which it crashed are named after the airship and their sports teams are called the Zeps.

The various independence groups in the Rhineland unite under Hans Adam Dorten and Hugo von Metzen, who recently forced Dorten to move from a policy of federation with Germany as a state to full independence. I’m not sure how much aid they’re getting from France; maybe less than you’d think.

John D. Rockefeller gives out nickels to members of a crowd outside his church on Sunday, because that’s just the kind of guy he is. Also a dime to a real estate broker he gets into a conversation with, as a souvenir.

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Today -100: August 20, 1923: Of floggings, martial law, and dangerous movies

The Macon County, Georgia sheriff is actually cracking down on racist terrorists, arresting 3 white men caught in the act of flogging 2 black men. Everyone in Macon has been buying guns. There are believed to be several flogging gangs, going after adulterers, bootleggers, whatever, not necessarily black. And of course there are lynching gangs.

The NYT notes that Southern governors are more concerned with floggings of white people than lynchings of black ones, the latter being a slippery slope towards the former.

Many Klan and anti-Klan meetings are held in and around Steubenville, Ohio, but police realize that many of the people pouring into the area aren’t either, they just want to see another fight. The NYT says an “impartial investigation,” by whom is not said, claims 90% of the adult men in the agricultural parts of Jefferson County are kluxers.

Oklahoma Gov. J.C. Walton describes the martial law imposed on Tulsa as Tulsahoovians being  “told to go to bed and when to get up”. The Klan denies being responsible for the many recent floggings. Court cases challenge the governor’s right to just declare martial law and place the military over civil authorities.

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Annoyingly, we are not told what dangerous film he was watching. And there’s no listing in today’s paper for what’s playing at the Lyric.

Speaking of dangerous movies, French PM Raymond Poincaré bans The Birth of a Nation, which was playing in Paris, worried about more conflict between American tourists and black French citizens. The film had been passed by the censors but Poincaré is using a French Revolutionary decree.

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Today -100: August 19, 1923: Of klanning, actualists, and elephants

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Is “klan” a verb now?

The Klan ignites crosses in 260 locations in Oklahoma simultaneously.

The epidemic of people being kidnapped and lashed, possibly by kluxers but it doesn’t say, expands outwards from Texas to Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio.

The Netherlands finally gets its own fascists, called the League of Actualists. Won’t come to anything. Hard to goose-step in wooden clogs, I guess.

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Today -100: August 18, 1923: Bye, Duchess

Florence Harding moves out of the White House.

Two black men are lynched in Georgia in separate incidents. The first is hanged from a tree customarily used for that purpose.

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Today -100: August 17, 1923: Of handshaking, electric horses, slemps, and kluniversities

After Steubenville, Ohio, locals beat the shit out of badly outnumbered Klansmen (100 kluxers v. 3,000 townies, supposedly), the Klan is demanding the resignation of Mayor Frank Hawkins (who “was renominated by the hoodlums, riff-raff, bootleggers, gamblers and the entire lawless element”) & the police chief. Armed kluxers are arriving from all over...

The Klan will run a candidate against Hawkins in November. He will lose badly, though kluxers will do very well in other Ohio municipal elections.

The American Philatelic Society cancels a meeting to shake hands with Pres. Coolidge. Harding sometimes shook 1,200 hands in a day, which is the sort of thing people think killed him.

And where Harding liked golf, Coolidge plans to get his exercise by horse-back riding and has picked one of the White House horses (how many horses does the White House have?) named General. The internet provides several images of Coolidge on horseback, always wearing a tie, naturally, but I’m not sure which one is General. Later, the Secret Service made him stop riding, so he got an electric horse, designed by John Harvey Kellogg, the cereal and anti-masturbation weirdo. Sadly, there seem to be no pictures of Coolidge on “Thunderbolt,” as the electric horse was known, but here it is, in its current pasture in the Coolidge Presidential Library.

Coolidge has also chosen a secretary, former Virginia congresscritter (1907-23) C. Bascom Slemp. The NAACP is furious because Slemp worked for a “lily white” Republican party in Virginia and voted against the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. He may or may not be a Klan member.

The Ku Klux Klan says Valparaiso University, which they are in the process of buying, will be open to people of every race and religious creed who are willing to go to Klan U.

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Today -100: August 16, 1923: Of embarrassing prisoners, recognitions, and kluniversities

Éamon de Valera is finally arrested, at an election meeting in Ennis, County Clare, at which his appearance had been announced. Troops rudely interrupt his speech and fire shots (blank, they claim). London newspapers say the “glamour of his imprisonment” may make him an “embarrassing prisoner” for the Irish government. 

Delegates from the US & Mexican governments sign an agreement intended to lead to the US finally recognizing the Mexican government. It sets out land and oil rights details which, if I understand this correctly, give US oil companies greater rights in Mexico than Mexicans have.

The Ku Klux Klan buys Valparaiso University in Indiana.

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Today -100: August 15, 1923: Of unchanging policies, changing noses, marital law, trains, and the limit

The White House says Coolidge will not change a single one of Harding’s policies.

Comedian Fannie Brice is getting  a nose job. “In noses as in life, one wearies of the too familiar.” It seems that Brice wants to try her hand at drama, and her nose is just too darned amusing.

German Communists call off their general strike in Berlin in a complete failure no one expected.

Martial law rules in Tulsa include a curfew and a ban on criticism of the military and state government. 

The Pullman Company is NOT retiring the train carriage that brought Harding’s body cross-country. It’s in the shops now, presumably being fumigated.

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Serial spouse-abuser Michael Kelly of New York City hit his wife Katherine with his fists and a chair, breaking her arm. So what’s the “limit,” you’re asking? 5 months and 29 days.

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Today -100: August 14, 1923: To Americanize the alien before the alien alienizes the American

Wilhelm Cuno’s last act as German chancellor was to announce that Germany is suspending reparations-in-kind payments, citing the need to prevent a complete breakdown of Germany’s economic & financial system and avoid, you know, famine. Payments in kind to France and Belgium were already suspended at the start of the Ruhr occupation.

Oklahoma Gov. J.C. Walton puts Tulsa under martial law after one Nathan Hantman is flogged, something about selling whisky and drugs.

Secretary of Labor James J. Davis has been traveling around Europe investigating immigration. On his return, he says “I am for selective immigration or none.” He calls for inspections abroad and on ships and... I assumed he was talking health, but the “selective system” would also “encourage the coming of those who have an understanding of and are in sympathy with American ideals, American ways and institutions – those who would be easily assimilated into American life, and we will be able to keep out those who are hostile to these principles.” He blames foreign governments for the many arriving immigrants not allowed into the US, saying they should check their “character” before issuing them passports. He also wants to register aliens so they can be deported in their first five years in the country if they express bad ideas: “a law to enroll all aliens will mean that we will be able to Americanize the alien before the alien alienizes the American.”

US Steel actually starts 8-hour instead of 12-hour shifts in Gary, Indiana and South Chicago, though not for everyone.

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Today -100: August 13, 1923: Cuno out

Amidst food riots and strikes, including a Communist-called general strike in Berlin, with 30 dead, Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno and his Cabinet resign. Cuno will be replaced by Gustav Stresemann of the German People’s Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, DVP), who will maintain the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr.

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Today -100: August 12, 1923: Of laddies, half-women, and thumbs

Florence Harding gives away Warren’s dog (the story says temporarily; it won’t be temporary).

Magician P. T. Selbit sues Goldwyn, the movie people, in London for a film exposing how he performs “sawing a woman in half,” which Selbit claims to have invented (although in the US another magician had the forethought to patent the illusion).

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Today -100: August 11, 1923: A rotten day’s work for a rotten day’s pay

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Harding is buried.

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A lot of the people he’s been meeting the last few days have been frustrated in their attempts to get Silent Cal to express an opinion on pretty much anything.

German Pres. Friedrich Ebert issues a proclamation banning handbills, meetings, speeches etc that will, I don’t know, lead to a soviet republic. There are strikes everywhere (Communist slogan: “A rotten day’s work for a rotten day’s pay”). In the Reichstag, the Communists (KPD) will introduce a motion of no confidence against Chancellor Cuno, and the United Socialists will support it, so he’s toast.

16 nations, including the US, Britain, Germany, Cuba, etc, present China with an arrogant note, as was the custom, about the abductions by bandits from that train in May. Demands include $8,000 compensation per abductee; the firing of 3 officials including the military governor of Shantung and their exclusion from future government positions; and stepped-up measures against bandits, supervised, naturally, by foreigners. The diplomats complain: “As long as China employs her best troops in civil war... the troops will be diverted from their true task.” You know, protecting white foreigners.

Jesus Salas Barraza, a member of the Durango State Legislature, confesses to organizing the assassination of Pancho Villa. He will be sentenced to 20 years but pardoned after 6 months.

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Today -100: August 10, 1923: Well, I didn’t think we’d be talking about Calvin Coolidge’s feet quite so soon

Marion, Ohio citizens suggest that Harding be buried in a mausoleum on an Indian mound.

The Montmarte Cabaret (or possible a Montmarte cabaret) loses its all-night license after Americans get the manager to assault and eject a black customer, who turns out to be a prince from Dahomey (Benin).

Speaking of Montmarte, I was watching the first episode of the 1960- BBC Maigret series on YouTube a while back, leaving the subtitles on precisely because they were so terrible as to be hilarious. At one point they rendered “Montmarte” as “Walmart.”

The National Association of Chiropodists says New Yorkers have the smallest, worst-shaped feet in the country because they don’t walk enough.

Pres. Coolidge left the New Willard Hotel early this morning for his regular hour-long stroll (his feet must be so well-shaped), accompanied by only 2 Secret Service agents.

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Today -100: August 9, 1923: We refuse to work under the bayonets of our oppressors

German Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno addresses the Reichstag, to jeers of “deceiver” and “living corpse” from the Communists. “Germany must and will continue passive resistance” in the Ruhr, he says. “What we cannot do and will not do is to abandon a German land and betray fellow-countrymen. We refuse to work under the bayonets of our oppressors.”

Some members of the Italian Socialist Party have broken off in order to collaborate with Mussolini. The Catholic Party had a similar split.

The Spanish bull-fighting season ends, with 6 dead matadors and 2 picadors. And the great matador Bombita crashes his car on the way to a match, fracturing his skull. Good. (There are several related matadors named Bombita. One of them, the Google Translate of his Spanish-language Wikipedia page informs us, “Sick of gravity, the bullfighter died in Seville on January 19 from 1947.”)

Miners take over the Recklinghausen coal mines in the Ruhr after they are told there isn’t enough paper money to pay their wages. They erect a gallows, and the money appears as if by magic.

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That’s new American ambassador Robert Woods Bliss, which is also his porn name. Okay, I’ll stop now.

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Today -100: August 8, 1923: Yup, that’s a train alright

People are turning out in large numbers all along the route to look at the train carrying Harding’s body. Which delays its arrival in D.C. until the dead of night.

The Klan hold a parade in Tampa in honor of Harding.

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Today -100: August 7, 1923: Of treaties, gomperses, and fine lots of fools

At Lausanne, the US & Turkey sign their treaty on trade & shit (it’s not a peace treaty; the US didn’t declare war on Turkey during the Great War).

Pres. Coolidge has been meeting almost exclusively with Republicans, with the exception of Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, who tells him that organized labor wants the continuance of strict limits on immigration.

The former king of Saxony Friederich August III has no desire to return to the throne, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t Saxon monarchists. A mob of them show up at the railway station in Plauen chanting for him, but he doesn’t open his carriage window. Finally they knock at the window, and he lowers it, berating them: “You call yourselves republicans! Fine lot of fools you are!” (Back in Saxony, Dresden police attack demonstrators demanding bread).

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Today -100: August 6, 1923: Deranged

A lot of talk about how to make the presidency less damaging to its occupant’s health. Assistant president? Single term? (The assistant president idea because there isn’t always a vice president. Like now -100).

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Also his lungs, intestines...

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Today -100: August 5, 1923: Of room 333, doctors, high souls, and kimonos

Coolidge is running the country from the $8-a-day suite in the Willard Hotel (room 333) that he’s been occupying (except after a fire) since taking the veepship. He took 333 over from the previous vice president, Whatsisname. He names Friday the 10th, the day Harding will be buried in Marion, Ohio, a national day of mourning.

Coolidge is probably keeping all of Harding’s cabinet, and he’s also keeping Charles Elmer Sawyer as White House physician, despite the manifestly poor job the homeopathist did in keeping the previous president alive. Sawyer, like Harding a resident of Marion, no doubt got the job because he once helped Harding’s mother, a midwife with a doctor’s license, refute charges that she accidentally killed a baby. Bill Clinton likewise protected an outrageously incompetent state medical examiner who covered up Clinton’s mother’s lethal mistakes as a nurse-anesthetist. 

Finishing up his lecture tour of North America, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

says it might be difficult to contact Harding’s spirit, since he is one of the high souls, not an earthbound spirit. And it usually takes 3 days after death before spirits can communicate (because of the Jesus thing). But after that he might advise Coolidge if asked.

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