Today -100: May 6, 1924: Of elections, flu cures, and georges

German elections (counting is still going on): While the outcome is presented as a victory for implementation of the Dawes Plan and a consequent de-escalation of hostilities with France, and the coalition government is likely to continue in office, its constituent centrist parties all lose votes. Parties on the right and left which reject the Weimar Republic increase their share of the vote, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) getting 19.5%, the Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP), standing in for the banned Nazis, 6.5%. The Communists (KPD) gain significantly with 12.6%, quadrupling their seats, while the Socialists (SPD) drop to 20%. The NYT says the extreme right didn’t do nearly as well as expected; the NYT will consistently underestimate the threat from the extreme right for the next decade.

The Army tests chlorine gas as a cure for influenza in horses and mules. And it works!

Sens. George Pepper, George Moses, George Norris, George McLean, and Walter George join the Society for the Prevention of Calling Pullman Car Porters “George.”

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Today -100: May 5, 1924: Of music masters, smoke screens, and imperial shoes

Edward Elgar is named Master of the King’s Music.

The Army’s Chemical Warfare Service gets a large bomber to lay down a smoke screen over lower Manhattan. This would be useful in a war to hide the city from an enemy fleet. But not from planes, which rather easily penetrate the smoke because it’s, you know, smoke.

In the first legislative elections in Southern Rhodesia last week, the government of Sir Charles Coghlan (Rhodesia Party) wins 25 or 26 of 30 seats. Only whites are allowed to vote (which is presumably such a given that the NYT story fails to mention it).

Condescending Headline of the Day -100:  

This is the royal tour led by Abyssinia’s Prince Regent Ras Tafari, the future Emperor Haile Selassie.

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Today -100: May 4, 1924: I am for economy

Pres. Coolidge issues his first veto, of a measure to increase pensions to veterans of the Civil War and Mexican-American War and some of their dependents, War of 1812 widows, etc. “I am for economy,” he says. This isn’t the main Bonus Bill, but is a pretty clear indicator of his plans for that one.

NYC Mayor John Hylan opposes Tammany Hall’s plan to make Surrogate (judge) James Foley its leader. This may be another step in Hylan’s ongoing fight with Gov. Al Smith, who favors Foley.

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Today -100: May 3, 1924: Of conditions of violence, avoiding offense, mah-jongg, bigamy, and huge airships

Coolidge bans the shipment of weapons and ammo to Cuba at the request of its government, which is currently fighting a rebellion in Santa Clara province (the US will still sell munitions to the Cuban government). The State Dept statement says Cuba brought “the condition of violence existing in Cuba formally to the attention of the American government.” As long as it was formal.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The Senate officially changes the name of “mah jong” to “mah-jongg,” in the course of fixing a 10% tax on mah-jongg sets.

It looks like British holders of $120 million in Confederate bonds may not be able to redeem them.

Paul Adolphe Tholome is convicted of bigamy in Paris, but his lawyer’s plea that he was patriotically helping France, which needs babies, and the fact that it was his first offence, persuades the jury to release him.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Says it’d be like all steampunk and stuff.

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Today -100: May 2, 1924: The Butler will do it

Coolidge appoints William M. Butler chair of the RNC. Butler is a lawyer who ran Cal’s primary campaign. (I was slightly startled to see the headline on this, thinking the Butler referred to was Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia U. president and sort of Taft’s running mate in 1913) who can be found elsewhere on the front page because of a kerfuffle over his coming out against prohibition.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says Al Smith won’t enter any primaries in states which have a favorite son candidate. Smith is basically ignoring all primaries in those states which have primaries (I’m feeling too lazy to look up how many that is). FDR also denies that the late Boss Murphy had any secret deals in non-NY states for delegates. Murphy tooootally had secret deals for delegates. Orville Poland, lawyer for the Anti-Saloon League, says FDR is a “false front,” his selection an attempt to give “a garb of respectability” to the anti-prohibition Smith.

Kurt Jahnke, who organized sabotage in the US during the Great War, is running for the Reichstag, as a Nationalist of course. He’s attacking Count Johann von Berstorff, who was the German ambassador to the US before the US entered the war and is currently seeking re-election, as a traitor for providing Jahnke insufficient support back then for fomenting strikes in US ports.

France is also having elections. Only 2 parties, of many, mention women’s suffrage in their platforms, and one wants it introduced only piecemeal. The Christian Socialists want universal women’s suffrage; they have 1 deputy in the outgoing National Assembly.

Former Indiana Gov. Warren T. McCray begins his prison sentence. He says, “I am facing the decree of fate with courage and fortitude and sublime confidence in my individual integrity of purpose.” One of his fellow prisoners aboard the train to the federal pen in Atlanta decides not to face the decree of fate with courage and fortitude and sublime confidence in his individual integrity of purpose, and escapes out a bathroom window.

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Today -100: May 1, 1924: Of ex-governors, Christian democracy, Mays Day, and prisoner exchanges

Former Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray, who resigned yesterday, is sentenced
to 10 years in prison & a $10,000 fine for mail fraud.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt agrees to head Al Smith’s presidential campaign. With that done, Smith says he can now take himself “out of the picture” and focus on governoring.

Smith’s competitor for the D. nomination William Gibbs McAdoo calls for a return to the “Christian democracy” of his father-in-law Woodrow Wilson, saying that materialism and the influence of money are eroding the tone and quality of American citizenship.

The German government bans May Day demonstrations, but the Communist Party says scheiß drauf.

Leon Trotsky says Japan is on the eve of a revolution, although one like the 1905 Russian Revolution rather than the 1917 ones. He denies Russia plans to invade Poland.

Russia exchanges 107 Poles in its prisons for 36 Communists in Polish prisons, 19 of whom are Jewish. 3, however, preferred prison in Poland to life in Russia. Most of the Poles held by Russia, including 6 priests, were in prison for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda; some were held without charge. The article fails to disclose what the Communists in Poland were charged with.

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Today -100: April 30, 1924: Of ex-governors and hamons

Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray resigns.

The Senate Teapot Dome Committee calls Georgia Hamon Rohrer, the widow of Oklahoma oil tycoon Jake Hamon, to ask about his scheming in 1920 to elect Warren G. Harding and gain access to the Navy’s oil reserves. She sits in the witness chair for 15 minutes with a calla lily in her hand while senators discuss just which of them called her and why, none willing to ask her questions, and then they dismiss her. I hope she didn’t come all the way from Oklahoma for this.

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Today -100: April 29, 1924: Of bombs and mail fraud

A Hungarian immigrant who claims to be named Landro Kiss – a likely story – is arrested with a bomb and a pistol near the late Boss Murphy’s home, possibly planning to kill whatever big shots showed up (as well as himself).

Indiana Governor Warren McCray is found guilty of mail fraud. The judge denies bail, saying he’s never seen so many felonies committed by one person. He should get out more.

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Today -100: April 28, 1924: Of faith-healers, dead bosses, the deadly enemy of Germany workers, and flaming hearses

William Jennings Bryan’s wife Mary is seeing a faith-healer for some undisclosed illness. Interesting, I guess, but why is it front-page news?

The death of Tammany Hall’s “Boss” Murphy has heartened the right wing of the Democratic Party (Southerners, klansmen, anti-papists, etc) that they may defeat NY Gov. Al Smith for the presidential nomination. More delegates to the national convention are expected to arrive without instructions, which may make it more difficult for any candidate to get the 2/3rd vote necessary for nomination (Spoiler Alert: hoo boy will it).

In Berlin, Communists attack an election meeting of the Völkisch Freedom Party that they thought Reichstag candidate Erich Ludendorff would attend. But as clashes injure 33 people, one of them stabbed, Ludendorff decides not to go. The Communists were summoned by their newspaper The Red Flag to stop “the deadly enemy of German workers [speaking in] Berlin, the workers’ city.”

The Mexican military capture, court-martial & execute rebel Gen. Juan Alanso (sic?) and 42 lesser officers within one day.

Metaphor of the Day -100:  

15,000 kluxers come out to celebrate Owen Poorbaugh, one of their ilk who died in jail where he was being held for carrying concealed weapons, riot & murder for the Lilly, Pennsylvania contretemps earlier this month. The hearse thing is sadly not a cross-burning gone wrong.

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Today -100: April 27, 1924: Of child labor and bosses

The House of Representatives votes 297 to 69 for a Constitutional amendment to empower Congress to regulate or ban child labor (under 18; an amendment to reduce this to 16 fails, as do attempts to exempt farm labor).

Without “Boss” Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall running his presidential candidacy behind the scenes, NY Gov. Al Smith might be forced to get off his ass and campaign, which he didn’t plan on doing before the Democratic National Convention. It doesn’t help that only Murphy knew how many “connections” he’d made, such as deals with delegates. So I guess everybody gets to re-negotiate their bribes.

Today -100: April 26, 1924: Of dead bosses, coffee, borders, and French postcards,

Charles Murphy of Tammany Hall dies of “acute indigestion” at 65. There won’t be a parade. No, really, there won’t be a parade is something the NYT has to inform us. NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith calls Boss Murphy “a noble, clean, wholesome, right-living man”. The death will require Smith to find someone else to run his presidential campaign. Murphy has no obvious successor at Tammany, so there will be a temporary triumvirate.

Asked for comment, Coolidge says he never met the man.

Chicago has a new Teapot Dome-themed coffee shop. Coffee is delivered via pipe lines. Also opened in 1924, and still around, is the Teapot Dome Diner in Paw Paw, Michigan, a town so nice they named it, well, you know.

Emma Goldman, who promised Germany not to do political stuff while living in Berlin, does political stuff, attempting to make a speech calling for the release of political prisoners in Russia. German Communists break up the meeting before she can finish her speech.

A conference on setting the boundary between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State breaks up without agreement, as was the custom. This isn’t about a few niggling miles here and there, but who gets Counties Tyrone and Fermanagh (or parts of them?). The treaty which allowed NI to opt not to join the Free State required, in such an event, plebiscites in those counties. NI politicians don’t want to allow that, because they’d lose.

New Jersey Gov. George Silzer tells Education Commissioner John Enright to tell local school boards to stop asking prospective teachers their religion.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 Not looking for pictures of boobies, but a go-slow strike.

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Today -100: April 25, 1924: Of baby’s cries around the world, fake sergeants-at-armses, and blackface comedians

Sen. Nathaniel Dial (D-SC), opposing an appropriation for the relief of starving German children, denies that there is any constitutional authority for heeding “a baby’s cry around the world.” Royal Copeland (D-NY) responds, “For my part, when a baby cries, I don’t stop to think what language it is crying in.” Dial ripostes that Dr. Copeland can’t tell him anything about babies, he has ten of them.

Incidentally, there were 3 congresscritters in 1924 with the first name “Royal.”

Documents of Gaston Means, con man extraordinaire and former Bureau of Investigation agent, supposedly showing Harry Daugherty’s various crimes, have mysteriously disappeared, taken by two men posing as Senate sergeants-at-arms who showed up at his house with a fake order from Sen. Brookhart. At least that’s Means’s story, and he’s sticking with it. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s bullshit.

In a case I believe called Some Fucking Racist v. Some Fucking Racist, D.W. Griffith sues Al Jolson, “the blackface comedian,” for $571,696.72 for walking off a film in 1922. There was no contract, just a gentleman’s agreement.

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Today -100: April 24, 1924: Of treasonable causes, bonuses, bangs, and radios

Disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty says the reason he refused to hand over documents to the Senate was because Sens. Burton Wheeler and Smith Brookhart visited Russia last summer. “I gladly gave up a post of honor rather than contribute to a treasonable cause.” He portrays the investigations into corruption at the DOJ as a Soviet plot to undermine confidence in government, calling it an “unlawful inquisition,” which is the worst kind of inquisition.

The Senate passes a bonus for veterans by a vote 67-17 after an amendment giving them the option to receive it in cash instead of 20-year insurance policies is defeated 47-38. Will Coolidge veto it? In an election year? An amendment to extend the time limit for service eligible for the bonus to include post-war occupation troops in Germany is rejected; Sen. Reed Smoot says they “lived like kings.”

Denmark has its first woman cabinet minister, which only the Soviet Union, the Ukraine and Ireland have had one of so far. Nina Bang of the Social Democrats will be minister of education.

US District Judge Hickenlooper in Cincinnati rules that radio musical broadcasts don’t count as public performances, so stations don’t have to pay copyright holders.

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Today -100: April 23, 1924: Amiable non-committal

Out of nowhere, Pres. Coolidge suggests, in a speech broadcast via the telephone on 11 radio stations, that the US might call a new international arms limitation conference – eventually. When this idea recently came up in the Senate, when Cal was, I believe, silent, as was the custom, Dems pointed out that the League of Nations was already working on that. In the speech, Coolidge also promises to crack down on graft and calls for economy in government. The NYT is unimpressed, saying the speech raises no issues, gives “no definite statement of a precise policy,” and reveals “no inner flame of passionate belief.” “It was a masterpiece of amiable non-committal.”

Speaking in Columbus, disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty says in a, dare I say it, Trumpian performance, that all the witnesses against him at the Senate Committee were lying, and indeed he has affidavits from them that they were coerced into doing so. He denies taking any liquor after becoming attorney general or allowing it in his home (he doesn’t say if he’s taken to the booze since being fired, but it does sound very much like he was breaking prohibition law until the minute he got the att. gen. gig). He claims that Sen. Burton Wheeler promised the IWW to get rid of him. “The enemy is at the gate,” he says.

Former prime minister of Newfoundland Sir Richard Squires is arrested for larceny.

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Today -100: April 22, 1924: Of handshakes and lynchings

Sen. Thomas Heflin (D-Alabama) complains that Pres. Coolidge has stopped shaking hands of visitors to the White House. Why, some of the tourists come to the capitol only once in their lifetime. “Boys could tell their children and their children’s children how it was to go into the presence of a real, virile, live, robust president and shake his vigorous hand and have him say a word to them as they passed...”

A black man, Luke Adams, is lynched near Norway, South Carolina for supposedly attacking a white woman.

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Today -100: April 21, 1924: Of bobbed-hair bandits, extracting revolutionary teeth, and junior Sherlocks

After a manhunt by many, many NYPD detectives, the notorious alliterative Bobbed-Hair Bandit of Brooklyn, 20-year-old Celia Cooney, is arrested along with her husband in Jacksonville, Florida, where she gave birth earlier this month to a baby that died after two days. Mr & Mrs Bobbed-Hair are charged with 17 hold-ups. They’ll serve 7 years in prison, where Ed will have his arm crushed in a machinery accident. Celia will die in 1992. There’s a book, more than 500 pages, about her.

Leon Trotsky, who has been ill for months, leading to rumors that he’d been arrested or killed or whatever, reappears, making speeches pointing out the hostility of France and the US towards the USSR. He notes that the US, while it is “trying to digest... all the huge gains it realized from the war” during its current isolationist phase, is stockpiling weapons for future war with Japan or in Europe, in the form of airplanes and poison gas. Dentists use gas, and the US is “preparing to use gas to extract a revolutionary tooth from Europe”.

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. premieres. Partly directed (uncredited) by Fatty Arbuckle.

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Today -100: April 20, 1924: Get into the game and stay in it

Eleanor Roosevelt is vice chair of the NY Democratic State Committee’s women’s division, but the Sunday New York Times Magazine assures us, “Politics has not made a masculine woman of her. Her first interest is her family.” Phew. She says American women are backward in political participation unlike, for example, British women. “Compared with the business of interesting women in politics, the getting of the vote was child’s play.” “My message to women would be: ‘Get into the game and stay in it.’ Throwing mud from the outside won’t help. Building up from the inside will.” The article fails to mention her husband, at all.

In a story about Coolidge making a speech next Tuesday on radio, I notice it is to be “broadcast” on 11 stations, but the headline uses the word “radiated.”

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Today -100: April 19, 1924: Of borders, square deals from klansmen, and honorary Fascists

But what about Mexican immigrants? An amendment to the racist immigration bill is proposed, authorizing a permanent Border Patrol agency to patrol the Mexican and Canadian borders.

Judge A.S. Wells dismisses the 5 charges against former Oklahoma governor J.C. Walton, who was impeached and removed from office last year in part for his war against the Ku Klux Klan. Says Judge Wells: “I hope that J.C. Walton will be fair enough to say that he got a square deal from at least one Klansman.”

Composer Giacomo Puccini is named an honorary Fascist.

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Today -100: April 18, 1924: Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas

Headline of the Day -100:  

Tourists would now only be able to watch Cal working at his desk as they troop through the Oval Office.

Composers, including John Philip Sousa and Irving Berlin, protest a bill that would allow radio stations to play their copyrighted music without paying royalties. That’s the Dill Bill, by the way, which seems like the starting point of a song, but no one sang one to the Sen. Patents Committee. The composers tell the committee that income from song-writing has dropped 50% in the last year, as free radio play means they can’t sell sheet music. Sousa says, “The Radio Corporation of America gets money, doesn’t it? If they get money out of my tunes, I want some of it, that’s all.”

In the immigration bill, the Senate decides to admit immigrants on the basis of 2% of the 1890 census. It is pointed out that only 1 immigrant would be permitted from Italy, an ally during the Great War, for every 5 Germans. Royal Copeland (D) says as a New Yorker he must speak out for the Jews, although he never met one until he was in college (he’s originally from Michigan).

Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and the Louis B. Mayer Company merge, becoming the Metro-Goldwyn Corporation (MGM), including not only production but the Lowe chain of theaters.

The Trenton YWCA condemns Atlantic City bathing beauty parades. The local’s president, Miss Pauline Smith, warns, “It was noticed by competent observers that the outlook on life of girls who participated was completely changed. Before the competition they were splendid examples of innocent and pure womanhood. Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas.”

The father of murder victim Ted Grosh, student at Arizona State University, wants to be hangman at the execution of his son’s killer (who is black). The state prison superintendent has no objection.

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Today -100: April 17, 1924: Of oil, graft, and wooden legs

A commission appointed by Pres. Coolidge says the US may run out of oil soon, and the Navy should be given priority.

Charles R. Forbes, the former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, as well as former assistant director Charles O’Leary and Nathan Thomson, president of the Thomson Kelly Company of Boston, are indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. $3 million (or $5m; unclear) of Bureau property (blankets, bandages, etc) was sold to Thomson for $600,000 under the pretense that it was unusable.

Speaking of veterans, S. Harry Smith wills the false leg he got to replace the leg he lost in the Great War to Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon. Some sort of protest against his compensation being reduced. To be clear, Smith is alive.

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