Today -100: October 17, 1924: The woman idea is here to stay

“Ma” Ferguson, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, says of the nomination of Nellie Taylor Ross for governor of Wyoming in the special election there, “The woman idea is here to stay.”

Matilde Pérez Molla becomes Spain’s first woman mayor, of Cuatretondeta. She is appointed, not elected. The first elected mayor, in 1932, will be María Domínguez Remón in Gallur, who will be killed by Francoists early in the Civil War. They weren’t big on the woman idea.

The ZR-3 zeppelin is supposed to be deflated and the hydrogen with which it crossed the Atlantic replaced with helium, which is a lot safer, but the US doesn’t have enough helium to inflate both the ZR-3 and the Shenandoah, so they may not do that.

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Today -100: October 16, 1924: There is no good in shutting your eyes to the portent of the Third Party movement

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes continues to campaign for Coolidge (and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) by focusing solely on Progressive candidate La Follette while ignoring Democratic candidate Davis. “The Third Party is a dangerous enemy to our form of government,” he says. He says Fightin’ Bob’s plan to give Congress a veto over Supreme Court decisions could lead to “any sort of dictatorship they please.”

Indiana Secretary of State Edward Jackson (R), who is running for governor, has been circulating photographs of Ku Klux Klan records to prove he is a member. As are almost all Republicans running for office in the state. Unclear why Jackson thought people needed reassurance on his klannishness.

The ZR-3 zeppelin completes its 5,000-mile trip from the factory in Germany that built it as part of war reparations to the US in 81 hours, circling New York City 5 times just above the skyscrapers and sailing high over Brooklyn (don’t we all) before landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In Toronto, Prince Edward falls off his horse, as was the custom.

The Wahabis capture Mecca. No “excesses” have been reported.

Headline of the Day -100:  

New York Giants pitcher Walter Huntzinger, not a large vomiting man, although I suppose he could be both.

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Today -100: October 15, 1924: Of salient personages and widows

Sen. Frank B. Brandegee (R-Connecticut), 60, commits suicide by gas inhalation. He was ill and had made some bad real estate speculations. He leaves a note for the servants, along with $200 to divide among 3 of them, warning “beware of the gas.” The NYT says Brandegee “was no mediocrity, but a salient personage.” “‘Reactionaries’ have their value. Especially are they needed now when ‘progressives’ is the only word.”

At an emergency state convention Wyoming Democrats nominate the late governor William Ross’s widow Nellie to replace him.

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Today -100: October 14, 1924: Of cunning plans

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes utters the conspiracy theory that Robert La Follette’s third-party presidential run is actually a plot to make his running mate Charles Bryan president.

The British Tory and Liberal parties come to non-compete agreements in some constituencies to prevent splitting the anti-Labour vote. Tories, for example, will not contest Liberal former PM Asquith’s Paisley (Scotland) seat or Ramsay MacDonald’s Aberavon (Wales) seat, to protect the former and threaten the latter.

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Today -100: October 13, 1924: Of Frances and navigators

Anatole France (born François-Anatole Thibault), Nobel-prize-winning French author, dies at 80.

Buster Keaton’s The Navigator premieres.

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Today -100: October 12, 1924: Coolidge, Then Chaos

Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis says the Coolidge slogan “Coolidge or Chaos” should be “Coolidge, Then Chaos.” In an Indianapolis speech, he talks a lot about Republican corruption and calls the R. record “a vast and unwholesome desert...” - that’s the worst kind of desert – “broken at great intervals by a few oases that Democratic votes were able to create”.

Pres. Coolidge addresses employees of the H. J. Heinz Company, the ketchup people, by radio. He says the public now wants business consolidation where it previously wanted monopolies broken up, because business now realizes that it owes service to the public. Oh, Republicans, aren’t they just adorable?

Coolidge’s secretary, C. Bascom Slemp, a name that will never stop being funny, recently said that Coolidge has “repeatedly” declared that he is not a member of, or in sympathy with, the Klan. One James Deery writes Slemp to ask just when it was that Cal said that. Deery replies refusing to give details but says “His attitude... has long been known to those who are in touch with him”. Slemp himself, by the way, was rumored to be a kluxer and, as congresscritter, led the effort to purge the Virginia Republican Party of black members.

Feminist birth-control activist Dora Russell is standing as a Labour candidate for Parliament for Chelsea, a constituency her husband Bertrand Russell twice failed to win.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 11, 1924: Of blimps blowing up. What more do you need?

Winston Churchill is a Tory now. He is standing for Parliament for Epping (Essex).

Labour has recruited independent MP Oswald Mosley, the future British Union of Fascists leader, to run against Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham. Other Labour candidates include Malcolm MacDonald, son of the prime minister, and Oliver Baldwin, son of the Tory party leader. They will all (Spoiler Alert) lose, but they’ll all get into Parliament later in the decade.

Army blimp TC-2 is destroyed over Newport News, Virginia when one of its bombs explodes, killing 2.

Dr. Henry Fox, a biology professor at Mercer University, a Baptist institution, is asked to resign after it is found that he has been teaching evolution. He will refuse to resign and be fired and replaced with a high school teacher. The university will claim Fox was fired for theological differences rather than his teaching, but c’mon.

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Today -100: October 10, 1924: Of amps, dissolutions, and slush

Members of the United States World War Amps, a delightfully named organization of veteran amputees, and other disabled vets, accuse the Veterans’ Bureau of having been infiltrated by the Klan and discriminating on racial and religious grounds. One thing: were amputees really compensated by the inch?

The dissolution of Parliament is held off until a bill for the border between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland passes through the Lords, then it’s done and elections set for October 29th. The Tories and the Liberals are expected to make relations with Russia their primary attack issue on Labour. Liberals are rightly worried about their party’s survival.

Progressive presidential candidate Robert La Follette accuses the Republicans of raising a $4 or 5 million slush fund. He believes that the money is coming from the Mellons, J.P. Morgan, etc.

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Today -100: October 9, 1924: Cold and unaffected

So that’s it for Britain’s first Labour government. Parliament votes for the Liberal proposal for an inquiry into the withdrawal of incitement to mutiny charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly. The Labour government had said such a vote would be taken as an issue of confidence and result in the dissolution of Parliament. Every party is blaming every other party for a general election the public doesn’t want, the last one having been less than a year ago and the one before that a bit over a year before.

The pro-Fascist wing of Italy’s Liberal Party is considering breaking away to form a new party which would be ironically called the Constitutional Party. Mussolini’s organ the Popolo d’Italia informs the Libs that “their resolution leaves Mussolini cold and unaffected.”

The home of Powhatan, Ohio Mayor George Boger is bombed. He doesn’t know why.

The Swedish government bans killing eagles. Environmentalists are also working to save the Swedish beaver and European bison (visen). I am happy to report the latter two species – don’t know about the eagles – are doing fine now.

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Today -100: October 8, 1924: Nothing in common with us

The British Labour Party Conference rejects affiliation by the Communist Party of Great Britain and membership of individual Communists. Sez PM Ramsay MacDonald: “Communism as such has nothing in common with us. It is the product of Czarism and the war mentality.” He says the last thing the British people want is another general election but the Liberals are forcing it on them. He’s also not impressed that H.H. Asquith said he’d make the Labour government eat out of his hand.

Treasury Sec. Andrew Mellon and his brother are intimately involved with the monopolistic Aluminum Company of America  and its efforts to get tariffs on imported aluminum increased. Coolidge hasn’t bothered asking for a copy of the Federal Trade Commission’s report on the company.

The Italian Liberal Party conference ends, without coming to any decision about whether to collaborate with the Fascist government. The party is deeply divided.

Lady Nancy Astor, MP supports a bill to change the marriage laws: “I think it is appalling that a man cannot marry his niece,” she says appalledly.

Ireland names its very first ambassador, Timothy Aloysius Smiddy, who will be Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to the US.

On Broadway:

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Today -100: October 7, 1924: Turn your weapons on your oppressors!

The minority Labour government in Britain is facing a Tory censure motion over the withdrawal of charges against J. R. Campbell, the editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly, for incitement to mutiny. He called on enlisted military personnel to organize passive resistance against war (“Refuse to shoot down your fellow workers! Refuse to fight for profits! Turn your weapons on your oppressors!”). The Liberals are piling on, proposing a Select Committee to investigate, on which 7 of 10 members would be from the opposition parties. PM Ramsay MacDonald threatens that if either measure passes, there will be new elections. Don’t threaten us with a good time, say Tories & Libs. The opposition parties also object to the proposed treaty with Russia.

Coolidge says “ridding society of the very institution of war... is going to be done because men and women demand it. We are making more progress in this direction than we yet fully realize.”

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Today -100: October 6, 1924: Of controllers, moral codes, and waxworks

A lawsuit is filed (the plaintiff isn’t identified in the article) against the appointment of Walter Cohen as controller of the customs, on the grounds that a black man can’t be a citizen of the United States and the 14th Amendment was never really properly ratified.

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft supports Collier’s attempt to formulate a moral code acceptable to all denominations that can be taught in public schools. He expresses regret that “religion itself” can’t be taught.

Paul Leni’s film Waxworks premieres in Austria.

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Today -100: October 5, 1924: Of klan kluries and world good-wll

Sheriff George Galligan, State’s Attorney Delos Duty, Judge Bowen of Herrin, Illinois, the owner of Herrin Hospital, and 8 others, are indicted for murder during the Klan-Anti-Kluxer gun battle last August. Since the grand jury are mostly kluxers themselves, indictments are not also issued for their hooded brethren.

Headline of the Day -100:  

The world says no.

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Today -100: October 4, 1924: Every tub must stand on its own bottom

Aviation Innovation of the Day -100: A plane is launched from a dirigible.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. says he wants to be considered for the NY governorship on his own merits, not his father’s: “We’ve got a saying in our family that every tub must stand on its own bottom.” All the Roosevelt family sayings are about bathtubs, probably.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sounds legit.

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Today -100: October 3, 1924: Every patriotic American has condemned the Ku Klux Klan but the president of the United States

All 47 League of Nations nations sign on to the compulsory arbitration protocol, or at least to recommend it to their home nations, and to the calling of an arms reduction conference.

China isn’t elected to one of the non-permanent seats on the League Council, so its delegates walk out. But hey, Uruguay got a seat.

William Butler, chair of the RNC, claims that in certain parts of the country the Democrats and La Follette Progressives are conspiring to deadlock the presidential election and throw it into the Congress, which he seems to think would result in Dem. running mate Charles Bryan becoming president (something about electing him vice president and then blocking a vote for president). He says he has evidence of this conspiracy but refuses to disclose it because reasons.

At Madison Square Garden, Dem. presidential candidate John W. Davis talks about the Republicans’ “alibi manufacturing industry,” such as former Sec. of the Interior Albert Fall’s claim that his $100,000 bribe was just a loan and former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt Jr’s alibi that “he was nothing but a messenger boy” in the transfer of the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Interior. Davis takes a crack at the “Silent Cal” thing: Washington wasn’t silent, Lincoln wasn’t silent, “Roosevelt was not silent and the Lord knows Wilson was not silent.”

One of the speakers is Municipal Civil Service Commissioner Ferdinand Morton, not to be mistaken for Jelly Roll Morton. The first black man on the commission, Morton says black people consider the Republican Party faithless to them and are shifting to the Dems, regardless of what the D’s are doing in the South. “Every patriotic American has condemned the Ku Klux Klan but the president of the United States,” he points out.

Wyoming Gov. William Ross dies of complications of an appendectomy. The state doesn’t have lieutenant governors, so the secretary of state will take over until a special election, which will have an interesting result (no spoilers).

The French Academy bans the words “defeatism” and “defeatist.”

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Today -100: October 2, 1924: I choose law

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. gives his acceptance speech for the Republican gubernatorial nomination at Cove Neck, Long Island. He denounces the Ku Klux Klan by name, and also the League of Nations, which he calls “thoroughly un-American” (!). He accuses the Smith administration of an “orgy of extravagance,” which is the worst kind of orgy, or possibly the best kind of orgy. He says Democrats are lying when they say they have the power at the state level to legalize light wines and beers and accuses them of choosing lawlessness re Prohibition. “I choose law,” he says. Despite knowing he’s gonna be attacked on Teapot Dome, he says nothing about it.

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx wants to broaden his government to include both Socialists and Nationalists. He thinks this is a thing that might actually happen, which is just adorbs.

Judge Thayer denies Sacco & Vanzetti’s motions for a new trial, which were based on new evidence, witnesses recanting their testimony, etc.

Leopold n’ Loeb judge John Caverly has a nervous breakdown.

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Today -100: October 1, 1924: Of not being overchoice in the selection of adjectives

The League of Nations, or at least its Arbitration Commission, alters the proposed war-no-more protocol to meet Japan’s objections, allowing nations to ignore the World Court on issues the court considers internal if they have previously submitting the issue to the League.

The special counsel investigating Teapot Dome locates $90,000 in bonds given to then-Interior-Secretary Albert Fall by a Canadian company laundering Sinclair Oil money.

The New Jersey Democratic Party convention will condemn the Klan by name while the Republican Party’s convention plans to ignore it and hope it goes away.

A letter in the NYT from one Morgan Van Woert says his extremely sensitive wife was not offended by “What Price Glory,” because she’s been on an army base before and “men who are engaged in the profession of arms are not overchoice in their selection of adjectives.” And one T. Woodhouse writes that “An adjective of a sanguinary or of a deistic nature need not necessarily make for profanity.”

Albert Einstein might join the faculty of Jerusalem University.

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Today -100: September 30, 1924: Of skyscrapers, ballot access, and kids

After seeing the plans of architect Mario Palanti, Mussolini says he’ll build the tallest skyscraper in the world in Rome, 88 stories & 1,100 feet, which would make it taller than the Eiffel Tower or the Woolworth Building. (This will not, of course, happen.)

The Louisiana secretary of state rejects petitions to put Robert La Follette’s name on the ballot, saying many of the signatures are of people previously registered as Democrats, and they need to all be independents. Even Calvin Coolidge says this is fucked up.

Germany gives a condition for joining the League of Nations: it cannot be required to allow French troops to pass through Germany to assist Poland in war against Russia.

Child actor Jackie Coogan (“The Kid,” “Oliver Twist), who is fronting an Armenian relief group, meets the pope. Tomorrow he’ll meet Mussolini, an experience I’m sure he’ll salt away for future roles:

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Today -100: September 29, 1924: Of internal matters & women congresscritters

At the League of Nations, Japan is demanding that the outlawing-war thing allow for, um, some issues considered by the World Court as internal matters not to be so considered (yeah, I’m being lazy about figuring this out). This is about US anti-Japanese-immigration laws and discrimination against Japanese people in South Africa, Australia and other countries. Japan could stop the disarmament conference happening if it doesn’t get its way.

Alice Paul of the Woman’s Party points out that only 6 states have nominated a woman for Congress (Pennsylvania has nominated 5 and Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Kansas & New Jersey one each). This shows, she says, that it is up to women to organize for women.

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Today -100: September 28, 1924: Of duels, gutter language, awakenings, and fasts

Democrats are delighted that the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt Jr for NY governor lets them pound on the issue of the Teapot Dome scandal, to which he is tangentially linked, doing damage to both TR Jr and the national Republican party.

The notification speech to TR Jr will be given by none other than “Wild Bill” Donovan.

An intra-Fascist duel: Italian Deputy Roberto Farinacci is wounded in a duel with swords with Prince Pignatelli, but not as badly as he will be fishing with hand grenades in the ‘30s. The cause of the duel is unexplained.

Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur criticizes the Maxwell Anderson/Laurence Stalling play “What Price Glory” as “full of gutter language,” which “were characteristic of the old-time sailor before the navy was made clean.”

Douglas MacArthur is promoted to major general at only 44.

In Csonográd, Hungary, seven “Awakening Hungarians” members who threw bombs at a Jewish society event a year ago (that’ll wake you up) are acquitted, the judge claiming that there was insufficient evidence after a confession supposedly obtained by torture is withdrawn.

Headline of the Day -100: 

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