Today -100: March 9, 1924: Of naming names

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty refuses to name the 2 congresscritters identified by the Chicago federal grand jury as involved in the corruption at the Veterans’ Bureau until such time as he personally sees evidence that convinces him of their guilt, because justice.

That said, the names are pretty widely known. Rep. Frederick Zihlman of Maryland says he wants his name cleared and will testify whenever & wherever. The other is Rep. John Langley of Kentucky, who will be arrested for something else entirely later this month.

The House Census Committee gives up attempting to reapportion the House’s seats, you know, the thing they were supposed to have done 3 years ago according to the Constitution. John Rankin (D-Miss.) and E. Hart Fenn (R-CT) support doing nothing because the 1920 census showed a shift of population to the cities, which is scary.

Eleutherios Venizelos, who rode in to rescue Greece from itself but then had a bunch of heart attacks, is riding back out again. And Prime Minister Georgios Kafantaris and his cabinet are forced to resign by the Army for refusing to abolish the monarchy in advance of the referendum on whether to abolish the monarchy.

The latest New York newspaper/police obsession:

She’s been robbing chain stores and pharmacists for weeks.

Philippines newspapers suggest that Coolidge is backing the much-despised Governor Leonard Woods to keep him from coming back to the US and running for president against him.

The Soviet Union bans the buying or kidnapping of women to be brides in Turkestan, Khirghizstan, etc. Also bigamy and child brides. Also, murderers won’t be able to get out of legal consequences by paying bribes to their victim’s family.

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Today -100: March 8, 1924: Of duels and petroleum boots

French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré challenges Deputy De Launay to a duel over remarks he made in the National Assembly. The seconds call the thing off after determining that he misheard those remarks.

Sen. James Reed of Missouri thinks William Gibbs McAdoo can’t win the presidential election: “no man wearing boots filled with Mr. Doheny’s petroleum can carry a State in the general election.”

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Today -100: March 7, 1924: Everyone’s a fucking drama queen in this courtroom

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty will be ousted within 48 hours... is something that has been said before, and is now said again.

The prosecutor in the Beer Hall Putsch trial storms out, complaining about the insults from alliterative defense lawyer Karl Kohl about his failure to prosecute high Bavarian officials implicated in the putsch. He turns the prosecution over to his assistant, who asks for an adjournment.

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Today -100: March 6, 1924: Evidence that something is yet lacking in development of political consciousness and capability

Pres. Coolidge says the Filipinos are not ready for independence in a letter to Speaker of the Philippines House of Representatives Manuel Roxas, currently in the US as part of a mission to demand... independence.  Coolidge congratulates the independencers for talking about using “all lawful means in our power,” such moderation being of course a tribute to the progress the Filipino people have made under US auspices. Anyway, without US “protection,” the Philippines couldn’t maintain its independence in this wicked world. The Filipino mission to the US, he says, is actually “evidence that something is yet lacking in development of political consciousness and capability.” So if they ask for independence, they’ve proven they’re not ready for it, got it. Another sign of Filipino “unpreparedness for the full obligations of citizenship”: complaining about, and resisting, the high-handed tactics of Governor Gen. Leonard Wood (who was, of course, not elected by the Filipino people), who Coolidge thinks is doing just great, having discussed it with people who are almost certainly all white. He does hold out the hope that if there is a time when independence would be better for the Filipino people and if they still want it, the US will grant it. If. If.

The Michigan Supreme Court upholds the Michigan State Normal School for “upholding some of the old-fashioned ideals of young womanhood” by expelling a student for smoking. This rule, which the student says doesn’t even exist, is not applied to male students.

The left wing of the British Labour Party revolts over, of all things, irrigation in the Sudan, which amounts to subsidizing of private enterprise.

German Deputy Carl Craemer says he’s too busy to take up the 3 duel challenges by the deputies he called traitors, but he is willing to repeat the statements outside the Reichstag and they could try to sue him for libel. Some joker puts out toy guns in the Reichstag.

France and Britain both suggest candidates to replace the caliph deposed by Turkey, candidates, obviously that they think they can control and who can tamp down discontent in their colonial empires. France is offering the Sultan of Morocco, Britain King Hussein of the Hedjaz (Saudi Arabia).

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Today -100: March 5, 1924: Of high traitors, crims, and misinterpretations

Ah, so Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty’s mysterious trip to Chicago was so he could testify to the grand jury investigating bribery at the Veterans’ Bureau, which fingered two (still unnamed) congresscritters.

Also, there’s an Assistant Attorney General Crim. John Crim. That’s his name. He’s refusing to give the Senate committee investigating the Vets’ Bureau the names of the congresscritters.

The Beer Hall Putsch trial holds a secret session to examine how Reichswehr weapons were handed over to Hitler’s followers.

Carl Graemer of the German People’s Party (DVP) refers to Albrecht von Graefe of the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) as a “high traitor” (that’s the worst kind of traitor) for his participation in the Beer Hall Putsch.  Von Graefe and two other right-wing deputies challenge Graemer to a duel – they even give him the convenient option of dueling with all 3 of them at once.

Winston Churchill officially announces that he is running in the by-election in the Abbey division of Westminster. I think he’d expected the Liberals and the Tories not to run candidates against him so he could run an anti-“Socialist” campaign as a “Constitutionalist,” but both parties, and Labour, will run their own. The Liberal will be a man much persecuted during the Great War as a conscientious objector, the unfortunately named James Duckers. The Tory will be the Otho Nicholson, nephew of the MP who died.

Mexican Pres. Obregón sets the next presidential and legislative elections for July 6, saying the rebellion has been quelled enough to hold them.

The NYT says the proposed bill to make the Philippines independent will be “misinterpreted” in the colony as suggesting that the Philippines will actually be made independent in the near future. Meanwhile, Secretary of War John Weeks thinks it would be better to set a date; he suggests 1949.

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Today -100: March 4, 1924: Where is the pain?

The Chicago federal grand jury which indicted Charles Forbes, the ex-director of the Veterans’ Bureau, failed to name the two congresscritters it says took money from the Bureau. Rep. Jasper Tincher (R-Kansas) will demand those names.

Professors from Northwestern, Columbia, and Antioch transmit thoughts on radio station WJAZ, you know, psychically: numbers, animals, food, “Ouch, it hurts... where is the pain?” And listeners hear/feel the thoughts, so it must be real.

Turkey deposes the caliph (who is the cousin of the deposed sultan) and abolishes the caliphate. The caliph will be exiled to... Switzerland, along with his harem (Update: actually, he leaves his harem and eunuchs behind, whether from choice or not is not clear). Religious teaching is also banned. There is no longer an ostensible head of the Muslim world. Britain is worried about what that means for India.

In the Beer Hall Putsch trial, the testimony for the defense, which evidently precedes that for the prosecution, has concluded, following super-long speeches by Hitler & Ludendorff, who blame Bavarian officials Dictator Gustav von Kahr, Gen. Otto von Lossow, and police chief Hans Ritter von Seisser for sneaking out of the beer hall after initially agreeing to back the putsch, thereby ensuring the putsch’s failure. I’m not sure how admitting to attempting treason but failing because of “betrayal” amounts to a defense. That said, they did have their own plans for marching on Berlin and overthrowing the Republic, so...

One of the accusations Ludendorff made at the trial was that the Vatican backed the Entente during the Great War. Not so, says the Vatican.

Russia is going to put a bunch of professors on trial for plotting against the government and spying for Poland.

Ku Klux Klan endorsements play a significant role in the elections of the (Republican) mayors of Saco & Rockland, Maine.

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Today -100: March 3, 1924: Of primaries and independent & constitutional candidates

NY Gov. Al Smith withdraws from the Illinois primaries after his name was filed without his permission. Evidently his strategy is to avoid all the primaries, which will then choose favorite son candidates with no chance of winning the national vote, who will give him their endorsement at the national convention after they see they have no chance of winning the national vote. I can see nothing that could go wrong with this strategy.

Winston Churchill, who lost his seat at the last general election, will stand in the Westminster by-election as an “independent and constitutional” candidate, which I guess means no longer a Liberal but not yet ready to rejoin the Tories. He’s positioning himself as an anti-Socialist.

Seán O'Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock premieres at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

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Today -100: March 2, 1924: Of demoralized parties and automobiles

The NYT says the Republican response to the Teapot Dome and other scandals shows a demoralized party, “men who had lost their nerve,” “panic-stricken,” “an attitude of surrender.” Congressional Republicans fail to show any support for Coolidge, who they’d prefer be replaced.

An automobile “census” finds there are about 18,241,477 cars in the world, 15 million of them in the US (11% of which are trucks). Behind the US, in order, Britain has 655,000, Canada 642,000, France 460,000, Germany 152,000.

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Today -100: March 1, 1924: Of bribery, hotel butterflies, and freedom of the German nation

US Marines intervene, as was the custom, in the conflict in Honduras between the 3 competing presidents.

Charles Forbes, the ex-director of the Veterans’ Bureau, is indicted by a federal grand jury for waste, fraud, and... debauchery. Also indicted is contractor John Thompson, who paid bribes to Forbes.

By a 282 to 72 vote, the House of Commons passes the second reading of a bill to equalize the terms for suffrage between the sexes, reducing the age for women to vote from 30 to 21. The Duchess of Atholl, who was anti-suffrage back in the day but then got elected to Parliament, opposes the bill, saying young wives wouldn’t have time to study politics. She then gets into a discussion with Rhys Davies over the relative merits as voters of traveling tinkers and “hotel butterflies.”

At the Beer Hall Putsch trial, Erich Ludendorff gives a political, anti-Semitic speech: “We want a Germany free of Marxism, semitism, and papal influences.” “Freedom of the nation cannot be expected from [the Jew].”

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Today -100: February 29, 1924: Physicians astonished

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: February 28, 1924: Super-important government business

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty refuses to resign until after he receives a fair hearing. And then rushes off to Chicago for some unspecified “important Government business,” after which he’ll go to Florida. It is not clear, perhaps even to himself, what Coolidge will do about this flouting of his demand that Dirty Harry resign within 48 hours.

Cops in Lufkin, Texas shoot at a lynch mob trying to storm the jail to seize a black prisoner. Four are wounded. The mob has not dispersed and the sheriff asks the governor to send Texas Rangers.

One of the Beer Hall Putsch defendants, former Bavaria Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner, insists that former Bavaria Dictator Gustav von Kahr supported the putsch.

3,000 people break up a meeting at a hotel in Waukesha, Wisconsin to organize a Ku Klux Klan branch.

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Today -100: February 27, 1924: Not ruffled in the least

Coolidge has supposedly told Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty to resign within 48 hours. He also wants him to resign as a delegate from Ohio to the Republican National Convention. I guess it was Dirty Harry buying Sinclair stock that finally got Coolidge to get off his ass.

The Beer Hall Putsch trial of Hitler, Ludendorff and 8 others begins. “Hitler showed plainly the strain of the excitement he was laboring under, while General Ludendorff apparently was not ruffled in the least.” It is decided to allow members of the public to observe (after being searched, of course). Many of the witnesses have come down with mysterious illnesses that will prevent them coming to testify. Hitler says he’s not guilty of treason.

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Today -100: February 26, 1924: Of rounded out holdings, Guv McCrayCray, and collectors

Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty admits having bought some Sinclair shares after the Teapot Dome lease was signed, but not many and only to “round out” his holdings. As one does.

Indiana Gov. Warren McCray is indicted for violation of banking laws and using the mails to defraud.

Coolidge will not appoint a replacement for William Cohen, the black man whose nomination for controller of customs in New Orleans was rejected twice by the Senate due to the opposition of Louisiana’s Democratic senators. Instead Cohen will continue in the job until Congress recesses, then Coolidge will give him another recess appointment. Of course he can’t actually be paid, but he’s rich and hasn’t been paid for the job for the last 9 months.

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Today -100: February 25, 1924: Of camel’s steps, fake news, intellectuals, and fertilizer

The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano attacks modern dances, especially the shimmy and the camel’s step.

Red revolution in Bulgaria! Prime minister and Cabinet killed! Etc! Or none of this happened.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: February 24, 1924: Of resignations, assassination attempts, jubalands, naughty dances, and poles

Sen. William Borah (R-Idaho) tells the Senate that the resignation of Attorney General Harry Daugherty is necessary for the good of the country and of the Republican party. If Coolidge doesn’t act, he says, impeaching of the attorney general will be the only course. During the Senate discussion, no R. defended Dirty Harry.

Albanian Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu (the future King Zog) is shot twice by an anarchist student in the Assembly building, but not seriously.

Mussolini writes to the British Foreign Office demanding Britain hand over Jubaland (currently part of British Kenya). Jubaland was one of the bribes offered to Italy in 1915 to get it to join the Great War on the Allies’ side.

Interior Secretary Hubert Work responds to a petition from the San Ildefenso Pueblo of the Tawa tribe of New Mexico asking the government not to interfere with their ceremonial dances. Work says that “those who are the guardians of the Indians” don’t wish to ban dances “which are not degrading” or go against the law of nature or moral laws.

The Navy gives up on its plans to send a dirigible over the North Pole.

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Today -100: February 23, 1924: Of invasions, fanatics, and reichstags

The Yugoslav ambassador to France claims that Bulgaria is plotting an attack on eastern Serbia.

Indian troops shoot dead 14 Sikh “fanatics” in Nabba State.

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx threatens the Reichstag: if it attempts to annul any martial-law decree, he will dissolve it.

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Today -100: February 22, 1924: Of compensation and oil

The Mixed Commission’s umpire in the cases arising from the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania awards $1 million to Americans, although human lives are only valued in pecuniary terms, so if a survivor was not financially dependent on a victim, they get nothing.

Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-Montana) accuses Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty of having bought Sinclair oil stock. Dirty Harry is defiantly refusing to resign and claims the charges against him are just politics.

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Today -100: February 21, 1924: Of coxes, patriotic tragedy, and competing relics

James Cox, the Democrat candidate for president in 1920, announces that he’s running again.

The (German) National Association of Ex-Officers declares next week’s trial of Gen. Erich Ludendorff a “patriotic tragedy.”

Yesterday I told of the sale by auction of the coat Abraham Lincoln was supposedly shot in. It seems the Chicago Historical Society has, um, another coat Lincoln was shot in, owned by a different former White House doorkeeper, that they’ve been displaying for years.

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Today -100: February 20, 1924: A bigger fool than the people of the United States give him credit for being

A White House spokesmodel, annoyingly unnamed, says the American people can rest assured that most government work is done without wrongdoing, and they should just ignore all the rumors.

The clothes worn by Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated sell at auction for $6,500. Mary Todd Lincoln had given them to a White House doorkeeper.

Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-Montana) denounces Attorney Gen. Harry Daugherty for protecting criminals, selling public offices, and says he may well have known about Teapot Dome. “If the attorney general has not actually got the money that has been collected in these various cases from one end of the country to the other, he is a bigger fool than the people of the United States give him credit for being.” Wheeler offers a resolution for an investigation of the AG. Since he wants a “real investigation,” he takes the unusual step of naming the senators he wants on the investigating committee, including, of course, himself.

The National Republican, the RNC organ, engaging in both-sidesism, says Democrats are trying to shield other Democrats who might be “smeared with petroleum.”

Louisiana Lt. Gov Hewitt Bouanchaud, who has been running for governor as an anti-Klan candidate, is given a big Fuqua You, as he is defeated by Henry Fuqua in the Democratic primary.

William Gibbs McAdoo would prefer not to do a grueling presidential campaign tour, so he’s applied for a permit to put up a radio broadcasting plant at his Los Angeles home capable of reaching the entire country.

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Today -100: February 19, 1924: Back to Honesty

Navy Secretary Edwin Denby resigns, effective next month, then issues a statement that the Teapot Dome etc leases were legal and in the best interests of the government. Coolidge accepts his resignation, telling him “You will go with the knowledge that your honesty and integrity have not been impugned.” Assistant Navy Sec. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. wasn’t told about this in advance. He goes to the White House to ask if Coolidge wants him to resign too. No. But he won’t be promoted to Secretary. And we hear he won’t be running for governor of NY.

William Gibbs McAdoo’s supporters tell him his connection with oil tycoon Edward Doheny, unrelated to Teapot Dome, isn’t enough to harm his shot at the presidency, so he announces that he will continue his campaign. He says he’ll drive corruption out of Washington; the supporters suggest the slogan “Back to Honesty.”

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith, asked if he’s a candidate for president, says “I am a candidate for nothing.”

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The 2 senators from Louisiana (Democrats) objected to Cohen as “personally obnoxious” to them. Cohen was originally nominated by Harding but was blocked, then re-nominated by Coolidge.

Gustav von Kahr quits as dictator of Bavaria, along with Gen. Otto von Lossow, who was illegally named by Kahr as commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr in Bavaria back in October. Kahr says he’s resigning because he was totally undercut by the Interior Ministry allowing demonstrations, although his forthcoming appearance as a witness at the Beer Hall Putsch trial may also have something to do with it. Lossow’s resignation may be a response to the deal between Bavarian PM von Knilling & federal Chancellor Marx requiring members of the Reichswehr in Bavaria to redo the old oath to Germany instead of the oath he introduced in October to Kahr & himself.

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