Secretary of War John Weeks says half the population is “subnormal” and/or “defective,” which means the US will have to “defend itself with one arm tied behind its back.” He wants children inspected so the next generation is better, but I’m unclear on what he’s suggesting be done.
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After NY Gov. Al Smith meets with new Tammany boss George Washington Olvany, the latter says Smith is definitely not running for re-election, leaving the Dems without an obvious replacement. Smith wants FDR to run, but FDR is ruling himself out on health grounds.
The South Carolina Democratic primary fails to produce a majority winner for the US Senate race, so there will have to be a second primary next month (shouldn’t that be called a secondary?) between ex-Gov. Coleman Blease and Rep. James Byrnes.
Coolidge has decided on the subjects on which he will run: common-sense farm relief, unofficial cooperation in Europe without political “engagements,” and, of course, tax cuts.
The Idaho Democratic convention condemns the Klan.
Marcus Garvey says the black people he intended to settle in Liberia will now go instead to... some other African country tbd. He says Britain, France, and Firestone Tire and Rubber Company forced Liberia to say it didn’t want the immigrants.
Henry Ford says cities will eventually vanish and industry and population be decentralized. Cities are simply too expensive to be maintained. Farmers will work in these factories during the dull season.
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Evidently the “Ku Klux Klan issue” is a real head-scratcher for Cal.
The Ohio Democratic convention condemns the Klan.
The Oklahoma Democratic party also opposes the Klan, but Republican Sen. John Harreld says klansmen are welcome in his party. “What do we care about that, anyway?” Gov. M.E. Trapp (D) says the KKK controls the R. party in the southwest. Oh sure, some kluxers are Democrats, he says, but they’re taking orders from Grand Dragons who are Republicans.
State’s Attorney Robert Crowe sums up: Leopold n’ Loeb are perverts, rattlesnakes, mad dogs, etc. He also has insults for the defense psychiatrists and Clarence Darrow.
The ZR-3, an airship built for the US Navy by the Zeppelin company in Germany will soon fly to the US. Any stowaways will be thrown over the side, with a parachute. Over the Atlantic?
“Ma” Ferguson increases her lead. She says it’s the death knell of the Klan in Texas. And when governor, she’ll fire kluxers holding government jobs.
The Ku Klux Klan’s prominence as an issue in this election cycle continues to grow, given further impetus by the victory of Ma & other anti-Klan candidates in the Texas Dem. primaries. Coolidge has called Dawes in to meet in person in Vermont, and the speculation is that it’s to talk about the Klan. Ohio Democrats are divided over how to deal with the Klan issue in their state convention. Georgia’s former governor/US senator Thomas Hardwick, who is running to reclaim the Senate seat from William Harris, accuses him of being a kluxer, specifically a member of the super-secret adjunct called the Imperial Klan. Professional Klan lecturer Rev. Oscar Haywood says the Klan is actually politically neutral; he says he won’t say anything against Davis, who is a “splendid man” but “I am not going to vote for him.”
With the Earth and Mars at their closest (physically, I mean, not emotionally), astronomers and others have been turning their telescopes and radios to the red planet. They haven’t found signs of life – yet – but have confirmed that Mars has water and an atmosphere.
H. L. Mencken, in his Baltimore Evening Standard column, says Davis is a bystander in the presidential campaign: “The actual combatants are the Hon. Mr. La Follette and the Hon. Mr. Coolidge. Each of these great statesmen stands for something that is simple and obvious—something that anyone may understand. Dr. Coolidge is for the Haves and Dr. La Follette is for the Have Nots. But whom is Dr. Davis for? I’m sure I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. ... La Follette is belaboring Coolidge, and the friends of Coolidge are belaboring La Follette, but no one seems to think it worthwhile to belabor Davis. He is simply concealed in the crowd, like a bootlegger at a wedding.” Read the whole column.
VP candidate Charles Dawes refuses to pose for newsreel cameras: “Hell, they’re not going to make a damned movie man out of me!”
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The White House releases a letter Coolidge wrote to the president of the National Negro Business League in which he congratulates the “economic emancipation being splendidly wrought out by the colored people for themselves; so I believe their full political rights will be won through the inevitable logic of their position and rightfulness of their claims.” Which is a good way of saying he doesn’t actually intend to help in any way, they’re on their own.
The Klan’s inevitable riposte to Miriam Ferguson’s “Me for Ma” slogan is “No Ma for Me.”
NY Mayor John Hylan bans the participation of a mixed group of black & white children in Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings.
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Miriam Ferguson, described by the NYT as “a typical Texas woman,” is running for governor in the Democratic primary as the anti-Klan candidate, although I seem to remember her husband, impeached former governor James Ferguson, as pretty racist himself. Slogan: Me for Ma. Which sounds like baby talk. Her opponent, Judge Felix Robertson, is trying not to mention his Klan links and is even claiming to support Catholics, while focusing on Prohibition. In its desperation, the Klan, which used to oppose the “Jew, Jug and Jesuit,” has dropped the first and third J-word.
The Dawes Plan agreement is signed. France and Belgium will remove their troops from the Ruhr within a year.
Giacomo Matteotti’s body is found, more than 2 months after he disappeared. In a culvert, a few miles outside Rome.
Coolidge declines to respond to John W. Davis’s acceptance speech, with its accusations of Republican corruption.
Henry Ford rather belatedly withdraws from the Michigan Republican primary for US senator. He says he doesn’t know the motive of the people who put his name forward, “but believe it cannot be a good one”.
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