Today -100: June 12, 1924: Of platforms & pleas

The Republican Convention adopts a platform by a vote of 13,000 to 28. It includes joining the World Court, Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon’s tax plan, and a federal anti-lynching law. It fails to mention the Ku Klux Klan by name or the Bonus, omits the Equal Rights Amendment, and opposes Philippines independence.

Republican leaders – congresscritters, Cabinet members, etc – choose Sen. William Borah of Idaho as Coolidge’s running mate (this looks very much like Coolidge doing what he said he wouldn’t do – intervening in the choice of veep). Informed of the decision, Borah again says fuck no.

Leopold n’ Loeb plead not guilty to kidnapping and murdering Bobby Franks (that’s two charges, both subject to the death penalty). It’s Richard Loeb’s 19th birthday.

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Today -100: June 11, 1924: Of premature climaxes

The Republican National Convention opens. Rep. Theodore Burton (Ohio) gives the keynote speech, saying most people “look to President Coolidge rather than to Congress for leadership.” That would be the Republican Congress, whose lack of complete subservience to Coolidge is pissing him off. And evidently also the delegates in the hall, who receive the speech enthusiastically.

Sen. William Borah of Idaho rules out being Coolidge’s running mate, this time without caveats.

Will Rogers is calling this the “Republican Vice President conscription convention.” Rogers is in the press gallery, palling around with William Jennings Bryan. Bryan asks him if he’s the one who writes a humorous column and says he himself is writing a serious article, but if he thinks of something comical, he’ll pass it on to Rogers. Rogers says he’ll do the same if he happens to think of something of a serious nature. Another version  of the story of the meeting of this surprise comedy double act has WJB telling Rogers “I believe you write laughable things, while I write serious things,” to which Rogers replies, “It may be that each of us has a wrong opinion of his own work.” Listening to Burton’s keynote speech, they both think he peaked in the middle, when he called on La Follette’s followers not to bolt the party; Bryan says “The speaker suffered from a premature climax.”

Coolidge’s father declines to attend the Convention – he has potatoes to plant.

Headline of the Day -100:  

 

French Prez Alexandre Millerand resigns after both houses of the National Assembly vote against him (what they voted on specifically is unclear to me). Millerand is a little over halfway through his 7-year term and argues that it’s unconstitutional to vote him out, while his Left-wing (Bloc des gauches) opponents argue that it was unconstitutional for him to violate the neutrality of his office by siding with Poncaré. The left refuses even to debate the matter or to “enter into relations with a Cabinet which by its composition is the negation of the rights of Parliament”.

Detroit quarantines and cordons off a 15-block section of the city after a smallpox outbreak. The quarantine is lifted after 15,000 people are vaccinated.

The LA Dry Squad raids Charlie Chaplin’s Beverly Hills home and find a boiler in the basement that turns out to be a water softener rather than a still. Who called the fuzz on the Little Tramp?

I don’t know what says “air of careless smartness” more, the knickers or the socks.

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Today -100: June 10, 1924: Of veeps, elrods, and the Chicago Way

Fightin’ Bob La Follette begins his campaign to pick a fight in the Republican Convention justifying a walkout. The Wisconsin delegation demands that Harry Daugherty & Albert Fall be condemned, expelled from the party, and banned from holding any position under a Republican administration. Daugherty, by the way, will be one of the Ohio delegates.

Sen. William Borah of Idaho says he’s not a candidate for VP, but neglects to say whether he’d accept the nomination if he was drafted. It’s widely believed he is Coolidge’s preferred choice, were Cal not remaining Silent on the subject.

60 members of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan open a headquarters in Cleveland to fight a possible anti-Klan plank in the Republican platform. There is some dispute over whether the national Klan is endorsing Indiana Sen. James Watson for veep, as is claimed by former Klan publicity agent Milton Elrod, which is a very Ku-Klux-Klan-publicity-agent kind of name. Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans denies the existence of any endorsement.

Before the cops alighted on Leopold n’ Loeb, they arrested two teachers at Bobby Franks’s school they suspected of having killed him. One of the teachers says he was beaten with rubber hoses and put in a cell with a black man who then claimed he confessed, as was the Chicago custom.

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Today -100: June 9, 1924: Hats!

Al Smith, in a letter to the chair of the Self-Determination League of Liberty – I don’t know what that is but I find the name kind of hilarious – says states should be allowed to set their own rules on light wines & beer up to a maximum alcohol content which Congress would set.

Former Illinois governor Frank Lowden says he absolutely will not accept the nomination to be Coolidge’s running mate. He says he can do more for farmers in the ag organizations he leads.

Women in Ecuador get the vote, the first country in Latin America.

The Republican convention hasn’t started yet, but we’re already invited to get excited by photographs sent over the telephone wires from Cleveland, such as this dynamic shot displaying the many varieties of hat in the NY delegation.

 That’s Teddy Roosevelt Jr on the left.

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Today -100: June 8, 1924: If government extravagance, hartebeests, ronin gangs, and dry and radiated conventions

Pres. Coolidge vetoes a bill to increase the salary of postal workers, saying “Government extravagance must stop” and that taxpayers are “paying all that it is possible for them to pay.” I hope he isn’t expecting anything important in the mail anytime soon.

The Earl of Athlone, the governor-general of South Africa and, of course, a member of the extended royal family, is wounded by a hartebeest while hunting. Princess Alice kills it. The hartebeest, not the earl, although that would be a great Agatha Christie novel. Death on the Veldt.

Japanese protesting the US’s racist immigration law break up a dance held by foreigners at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and others – “gangs of ronin” – stop cinemas showing American films.

The NYT expects its readers to know the word ronin without an explanation. I wonder where they would have come across it.

Republican leaders are unable to quell efforts to force the National Convention to take a position on the Klan next week. There may also be a fight over watering down, er, light wine & beering down Prohibition.

Federal and Ohio prohibition agents are working to keep the Republican National Convention in Cleveland dry. The NYPD plan to do the same for the Dems and have already started arresting suspicious characters, who judges will hold without bail until the Dem convention is over.

Former Republican Louisiana Gov. H.C. Warmoth (elected 1868 at 26 years old, impeached 1872) tries to have the R. Convention unseat the Louisiana delegation, saying there is no real R. party in the state: fewer than 1% of registered voters are R’s and there are no R elected officials. He loses, but threatens to bring it up on the floor.

The convention will be the first to feature microphones and to be broadcast on radio (18 stations as far west as Kansas City, with commentary on WEAF by Graham McNamee, the guy who invented play-by-play sportscasting) and to have photos sent over the wire.

French President Alexandre Millerand has been trying to pick a new prime minister, only to be turned down by several people. Finally, he’s found someone willing to take the job: former finance minister Frédéric François-Marsal. Congratulations, Freddy!

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Today -100: June 7, 1924: Of honest brokers, unsightly legal battles,, running mates, and strange and long inscrutable purposes

The Reichstag votes to accept the Dawes report 247-183 after a speech by Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann in which he says Germany has to get on the United States’s good side: “in the long run, the post of honest broker in European matters is certain to fall to the United States. America is too wealthy to feel any interest in weakening Germany. It is far enough away from Europe to see things correctly.”

The parents of Leopold n’ Loeb deny that they have set up a million-dollar defense fund or want “to stage an unsightly legal battle with an elaborate array of counsel and an army of high-priced alienists in an attempt to defeat justice.” Of course Clarence Darrow is an elaborate array of counsel all by himself. They do intend to go for an insanity plea.

The White House denies that Coolidge wants former Illinois governor Frank Lowden as his running mate. In fact, he has no preference at all.

The Prohibition Party’s convention nominates H.P. Faris (or H.P. Farts as the NYT index calls him, and I am WAY too old to laugh at that) for president and Dr. A.P. Gouthey of Seattle as his running mate. Gouthey immediately withdraws, so they nominate Marie Brehm, who will be the first woman to run for VP in the US. The convention declines to adopt a plank against tobacco use.

At Howard University, Coolidge praises the negro race and credits, um...: “The accomplishments of the colored people in the United States in the brief historic period since they were brought here from the restrictions of their native continent cannot but make us realize that there is something essential in our civilization which gives it a special power.” That something essential is of course Christianity. “But for the strange and long inscrutable purpose which in the ordering of human affairs subjected a part of the black race to the ordeal of slavery, that race might have been assigned to the tragic fate which has befallen many aboriginal peoples when brought into conflict with more advanced communities.” So that’s okay, then. If some negroes “have suffered, if some have been denied, if some have been sacrificed, we are able at last to realize that their sacrifices were borne in a great cause.”

The NYT finally mentions the Indian Citizenship Act, which passed into law days ago, granting US citizenship to Native Americans. An editorial reassures us that citizenship is “not considered inconsistent with wardship”.

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Today -100: June 6, 1924: Utter disregard of the law is the worst kind of disregard of the law

The Indiana Democratic Convention nominates Carleton McCulloch for governor, bucking the strident Klan opposition to him (the Klan in Indiana, unlike most states, is mostly Republican). McCulloch lost to Warren McCray last time. McCray is now in prison, a testament to what happens when you don’t do exactly what the Klan tells you to do (also, he was pretty corrupt). Edward Jackson, the Klan choice, will be the Republican nominee.

The Senate Teapot Dome Committee releases its report. It says former interior sec. Albert Fall made the contracts with the Sinclair and Doheny oil companies with “utter disregard of the law.” The committee seems to think there was something wrong with Doheny loaning $100,000 to Fall while the negotiations were going on.

The Senate votes 70-2 to ask the Supreme Court to rule on whether the Brookhart Committee has the authority to subpoena former attorney general Harry Daugherty, who has refused to testify.

There is a “movement” to name Nebraska Gov. William Bryan, brother of 3-time presidential loser William Jennings Bryan, as the running mate of Al Smith if he gets the Democratic nomination.

The Chicago grand jury indicts Leopold n’ Loeb and the former’s confession is released; you can read it at the link. The families have supposedly raised a million-dollar defense fund, run by Clarence Darrow.

The under secretary of the British Air Ministry tells Parliament that the Ministry tested a death ray, presumably Grindell Matthews’s “diabolical ray,” on one of its experts (death ray expert, I guess) at ten yards, and he wasn’t even slightly vaporized.

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Today -100: June 5, 1924: Of super-intellects, enlistment mania, racial insults, and bitter personal feeling

The grand jury hears evidence against the “19-year-old graduates of super-intellect,” Leopold n’ Loeb, including the testimony of an employee of the company that rented them the murder car; the optician who traced the rare model of spectacles Leopold left by the body; the stationer who sold him the paper and envelope he used for the ransom note...

The American Psychiatric Association convention in Atlantic City has a ball discussing the Leopold n’ Loeb case. They blame the parents.

There’s a guy who has enlisted in the army 12 times in 6 states in the last 6 months under different names. He is said to have “enlistment mania.”

Four more Japanese commit ritual suicide to protest the US immigration law, according to provincial newspapers, although only one of the suicides is for-suresies a protest, the man leaving a letter protesting the “racial insult.”

Disgraced former attorney general Harry Daugherty’s lawyer tells the Senate Committee that Dirty Harry will refuse to testify and his lawyers will stop showing up too. DH complains that they didn’t call any of the witnesses he suggested and conducted their inquiry “with such bitter personal feeling toward me”.

The RNC will probably recommend that women be allowed to vote at next week’s national convention.

Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel offers his resignation on account of the long recovery time expected after that assassination attempt, but it is rejected.

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Today -100: June 4, 1924: Or running mates, dudes, politburos, and passages

Coolidge will leave the choice of his running mate to the R. Convention. The top choices seem to be Sen. William Borah and Commerce Sec. Herbert Hoover, both of whom say they don’t want the job.

Fightin’ Bob La Follette is preparing his 3rd-party run, which would commence after the Republican Convention fails to pick him (the same sort of walk-out Theodore Roosevelt followers staged in 1912). There is some talk that at 68 he’s just too old. He’ll be picking his own running mate. He may pick Sen. Burton Wheeler, a Democrat, but Wheeler doesn’t want the job either.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says Al Smith’s New York delegates to the Dem. Convention won’t push for modification of the Volstead Act.

Leopold n’ Loeb are not speaking to each other in the county jail, even during exercise period, which Loeb spent teaching a negro prisoner how to read. One prisoner complains that Leopold thinks he’s too good for us. Loeb, though, is considered a “good fellow.” They’re both ignoring their cellmates, who in turn look down on them as “dudes.”

Germany: Helmut Marx’s old cabinet will be his new cabinet, negotiations to bring in the Nationalists having failed after the over-reached with their demands. This despite the head of the army, Gen. Hans von Seeckt, saying that he couldn’t be held responsible for the safety of the government without the inclusion of the Nats. Marx won’t seek a new vote of confidence, but will be relying on the tacit support of the Socialists in the Reichstag.

The Lenin-era Politburo is re-elected, including Trotsky.

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India is published.

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Today -100: June 3, 1924: Tuberculosis. Not exactly Kafkaesque.

The Chicago PD are trying to pin another murder and another kidnapping on Leopold n’ Loeb.

Japan says the US’s new immigration act abrogates the 1911 Gentlemen’s Agreement, so Japan is now free allow Japanese to emigrate to Mexico and Canada and if they happen to sneak across the border, hey, whaddaya gonna do.

Pres. Coolidge signs the tax bill, reducing income taxes 25%, while complaining about many of its provisions and its lack of “real” tax reforms.

The Senate votes 61-23 for a Constitutional amendment to allow the federal government to regulate child labor. The ratification process now begins in state legislatures without, I have to say, a lot of hoopla. It’ll get 28 states by 1937 and then... crickets.

Franz Kafka dies, at age 40. He is unknown in the English-speaking world (so no obit) and everywhere else, really. Some of his best stuff, including The Trial and The Castle, will be published posthumously.

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Today -100: June 2, 1924: I was never more profoundly impressed by a suicide

Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel (who is also a Catholic priest) is shot in the chest by a railroad employee, Karl Jaworek, identified as a Socialist, although his motive is that he is poor. Jaworek then shoots himself, but not fatally (also, 2 of the 3 bullets he fired at Seipel point-blank missed; some people are just not gun people).

The 4 French left-wing parties are trying to force Pres. Alexandre Millerand out of office by saying they will accept no prime minister candidate he offers. Raymond Poincaré once again offers his resignation and that of his cabinet, and is told by Millerand to stay in office until a new government is formed.

Leopold n’ Loeb are now accusing each other of being the one who killed Bobby Franks, each claiming to have just driven the car. Leopold says it was just an “experiment,” you know, like an entomologist killing a beetle. I’m thinking if he’d completed his legal studies he would have been a crap lawyer – no Clarence Darrow, you might say.

The Russian Communist Party Congress reverses itself and bans anti-religious propaganda aimed at peasants.

A revolutionary movement is roiling Albania, and beginning to march on Tirana. Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy are all looking to intervene.

The ritual suicide of a Japanese man outside the ruins (from the earthquake) of the US Embassy to protest the exclusionist immigration bill has stirred up great anti-American feeling. Says the head of the Tokyo Police: “I was never more profoundly impressed by a suicide ... He will probably be shown the honors due to a soldier who died on the battlefield.”

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Today -100: June 1, 1924: I have a hanging case

Leopold n’ Loeb confess to kidnapping and killing Bobby Franks. “I have a hanging case,” State’s Attorney Robert Crowe crows. The two self-described geniuses forgot to coordinate their alibis.

We’re already hearing crap psychological theories about how it was their very precocity that lead to “mental and moral perversion.”

A fire kills 22 girl inmate at the Hope Development School for Subnormal Girls in Playa del Rey, California.

“Perversion,” “subnormal.” They weren’t exactly Politically Correct in 1924, were they? (Update: it was actually called the Hope Development School for Deficient Girls. And all its doors were locked.)

In the Italian Parliament, a speech by Socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti attacking the legitimacy of the recent parliamentary elections, which were conducted in an atmosphere of violent Fascist intimidation, sets off a free-for-all. Franceso Giunta (Fascist) calls Socialist deputies “that gang,” which is evidently more insulting in Italian than it sounds in English.  Opposition deputy Gen. Roberto Bencivenga, “shouting incoherent threats,” is attacked by a bunch of Fascists, as was the custom. Later Bencivenga challenges Giunta to a duel.

Japan protests the anti-Japanese provisions of the new US Immigration Act as violating the 1911 treaty.

Irving Berlin has composed an election song for Alfred E. Smith, called “We’ll All Go Voting for Al.” I can’t find a recording of it online, but that’s not a very promising start, is it? The first lines are “The bands will all be playing / As we go ‘Hip Hooraying,’” and it just goes on like that. Don’t give up your day job, Irving. Oh that is your day job, you say?

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Today -100: May 31, 1924: Of checks, franks, and klan wreaths

Headline of the Day -100:  

If by “check” you mean “death.” But he’s a Gurkha, thus the lack of dismay. Shamsherpun by name. He won’t be the last check.

Nathan Leopold, 19, and Richard Loeb, 18, are arrested for the murder of Bobby Franks, 14 (the murderers’ ages are reported correctly, but the NYT can’t make up its mind about Franks, despite having had days to get it right). Leopold, who doesn’t seem to know when to shut up, says the state’s attorney asked him if he’d ever read any works dealing with perversion; he answered that he’d read 16th-century bad boy and renowned homosexualist Pietro Aretino’s I Ragionamenti, which is about prostitution.

The Allies demand that Germany allow the resumption of inspections of its military, which Germany ended at the start of the Ruhr occupation. Germany says the provision of the Versailles Treaty allowing inspections has expired since Germany has toooootally disarmed, and inspections should now shift from the Allies to the League of Nations. The Allies refuse to believe that Germany has toooootally disarmed, with good reason, and say it’s up to them and not Germany to decide when the conditions have been fulfilled.

The German Nationalists give up their attempt to form a government in which they would have control over all the major positions and impose their own foreign policy and get control of Prussia. For some reason the moderate parties didn’t want to go along with that. So Pres. Ebert asks Wilhelm Marx to try again to form a new government.

In KKK Memorial Day news, a K.K.K. wreath is placed at the war memorial in Hicksville, Long Island, causing a kerfuffle since the parade there was organized by the Knights of Columbus, the 3 Hicksville Great War dead all having been members. That wreath was placed furtively during the parade, but in Binghamton, kluxers in kluxer regalia (but without masks) attempt to place a wreath on the local monument and are dispersed by a single Civil War vet, who threatens them with his cane, which is made from wood from the Andersonville prisoner of war camp.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Same.

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Today -100: May 30, 1924: Of advanced thinkers, veeps, and kampfs

At the Senate DOJ Committee, Gaston Weeks, former Bureau of Investigation agent and con man, accuses Treasury Sec Andrew Mellon of large-scale authorizations of withdrawal of liquor from bonded warehouses, partly to fund the Republican Party’s deficit, and partly so banks could liquidate their frozen credits. And some other shit, but I stopped reading when I decided nothing Weeks says is worth giving credence to.

After having released a couple of teachers who were suspected of killing Bobby Franks (because of how well-written the ransom notes were), the Chicago PD arrest 5 more suspects, including Nathan Leopold Jr., who left his glasses behind at the dump spot. He immediately admits that those are indeed his glasses, but says he left them in the area, where he often roamed for ornithological reasons, the week before the murder. “Examination developed the fact that he considered himself an advanced thinker and that he professed atheism.”

Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover says he is not a candidate for the vice presidency.

Adolf Hitler announces that he is writing a book in his prison cell. He says his Beer Hall Putsch saved Germany from a dictatorship led by Gen. Hans von Seeckt but with industrial magnate Hugo Stinnes (who died last month) running things behind the scenes. Given that Stinnes was a major financial backer of the Nazis, I don’t know what the hell Hitler is doing here.

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Today -100: May 29, 1924: Take the C Out of Cal

Fightin’ Bob La Follette strongly hints that he will run as a third-party candidate for president unless the D’s & R’s “cleaned house.” And the Farmer-Labor Progressive Party, which just allowed Communist delegates into its national convention, should also clean house. That’s a lot of clean houses.

The House votes 166-138 for a Navy bill that will build a bunch of new warships, the US having fallen behind the 5:5:3 ratio with Britain and Japan established by the Washington Treaty. Thomas Butler (R-Penn.), chair of the Navy Committee and sponsor of this bill, says “This navy of ours has run down,” so he had to violate the Republican commitment to economy. Also, everyone expects Coolidge to call another arms limitation conference after the whole Ruhr/German reparations thing is fixed, and, Butler says, we need to build more ships to force Britain to give up some of its ships, which would also mean scrapping US ships.

Rep. Sol Bloom (D-NY), who used to be in the sheet music business, demonstrates why he is no longer in the sheet music business by composing a campaign song for Al Smith entitled “Take the C Out of Cal and That Leaves Al (And Al Means Smith).”

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Today -100: May 28, 1924: This must be a Parliament and not the degenerate successor of Parliament

The new Reichstag’s opening session concludes with a sing-a-long, competing strains of The Internationale and Deutschland Über Alles (one point to the NYT for knowing that the latter’s melody was composed by Haydn). The Communists are especially loud (with cowbells and everything) when Ludendorff’s name is called.

There’s also a new Italian Parliament. Mussolini tells it that it’s the “very last parliamentary experiment.” If it “fails,” it will be replaced by something better. He does offer the possibility that Fascismo “may lead to a new period of splendor of Parliament,” but “This must be a Parliament and not the degenerate successor of Parliament.” Degenerate successors are the worst kind of successor. Or possibly the best kind.

The Methodist General Conference lifts the ban on dancing, theater- and circus-going, card-playing etc. Not that the Methodists now approve that sort of thing, mind you.

Grindell Matthews is going to France to discuss selling his Diabolical Ray, after Britain made him an offer, contingent on his proving its efficacy by halting a motor engine, a condition he finds insulting. His business partners attempt to serve him an injunction, but their lawyer arrives after Matthews’ plane has taken off. The US is also trying to get its grubby hands on the device, but they can’t find Matthews.

Russia is also said to have a death ray that can blow planes out of the sky, which explains the bellicosity of War Minister Leon Trotsky’s recent speeches.

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Today -100: May 27, 1924: Of exclusions, lynchings, and ostriches

Coolidge signs the immigration bill but says he’d have vetoed the Japanese exclusion provision had it been a stand-alone bill. So he dislikes racism, but not THAT much.

There’s still no deal on a new German cabinet. The Nationalists are demanding that Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (who was just elected to the Reichstag) be made chancellor, that a new president be elected, that participants in the Beer Hall and Küstrin putsches be amnestied, that all Jews who have entered Germany since 1914 be expelled, all German Jews to be put under special legislation, etc.

Two young black men are lynched in Fort Meyers, Florida after being accused of attacking white girls.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: May 26, 1924: Of Leagues and parties unknown

Edouard Herriot, who takes over as French PM next week, says French foreign policy will be built on the League of Nations, the one sure hope for peace.

As reported here a couple of days ago, shots were fired in Herrin, Illinois at the car of KKK-paid dry raider Glenn Young’s car, wounding him and his wife. Now an alleged “gangster” (I assume meaning bootlegger), Jack Skelcher (which is a very bootleggery name), believed to be one of the would-be assassins, is shot dead by... well, none of the many witnesses to the shooting saw nuthin’, so the coroner’s jury rules he was killed by “parties unknown,” which are the worst kind of parties. One cop says he deputized 10 or 12 men to “investigate suspicious characters,” but won’t say who the deputies were.

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Today -100: May 25, 1924: Of Marxist corpses, death rays, true liberty, and colonies

Karl Marx’s grandson Jean Longuet rejects Soviet Russia’s request to transfer KM’s body from London to Moscow, saying Russia is totally misinterpreting his work.

Dr. T.F. Wall, lecturer in electrical research at Sheffield University, has also invented a death ray. We are entering a golden age of death rays. British newspapers have been demanding that Grindell Matthews not be allowed to hawk his own Diabolical Ray to a French company, so he has been called back for talks with the military. And Reinhold Wulle, the near-fascist German deputy, claims that there are no fewer than three German death ray patents.

Speaking of German inventions, the hot new thing in Berlin is mini-radios suitable for pockets, with headphones and an antenna in one’s hat.

Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III, wearing a general’s uniform, opens the Parliament with a speech praising Fascism, Mussolini’s militia, and the crackdown on The Duck’s enemies: “The Italian people wish liberty, true liberty, to be left intact, but they have clearly shown that they repudiate every form of degeneration of liberty and every form of license, just as they repudiate all weakness or tolerance because they wish all special individual and class interests to be subordinated to the general interests of the community.”

Duke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg, the former governor of Togoland, is head of a colonization company aiming to establish a feudal dukedom in Dutch New Guinea, in which the Dutch colonial government would have no say and all laws protecting the 200,000 natives in the 200,000 square mile concession would be abrogated. However, the plan seems to have been scuppered by... people finding out about it.

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Today -100: May 24, 1924: This is a strictly commercial proposition

Bobby Franks was already dead when his kidnappers made their ransom demands, probably killed accidentally when he was gagged. The ransom letter resembles one in a recent (unnamed) detective story.

NYC Mayor John Hylan orders an inquiry into why John D. Rockefeller Jr’s daughter Abby received only a suspended sentence for speeding (29 mph on 10th Avenue).

Glenn Young, who was paid by the Ku Klux Klan as a dry raider in and around Herrin, Illinois, and his wife are wounded in a drive-by shooting.

The Senate votes 56-5 to approve the Borah report confirming that the indictment of Burton Wheeler (D-Montana) was a frame-up designed to derail his investigation of then-attorney general Harry Daugherty and that he was never paid to lobby the Interior Dept.

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