Today -100: January 14, 1925: A coolness might result

French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot warns that “if the Soviets continue to carry out a Soviet policy in France, a coolness might result.” Grigori Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, recently ordered the French Communist Party to exert itself in the municipal elections, which is obviously scandalous.

Banker/forger Fred Pollman, who repudiated the pardon he bought from Kansas then-Gov. Jonathan Davis, tries to present his pardon to the new governor. Who refuses to accept it. The attorney general says they may have to declare Davis’s last pardons & paroles void.

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Today -100: January 13, 1925: Of bitter and unreasoning oppositions, secret societies, and musical commanders

Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son are arrested on the morning of the day his term expired rather than after he left office, as was expected. Davis complains that the arrest shows the “bitter and unreasoning opposition” to his governorship (bitter and unreasoning opposition is the worst kind of opposition). He claims to want his pardoning processes to be investigated by the Legislature. Were brown paper bags employed? that sort of thing, probably.

Mussolini introduces a bill to ban secret societies, i.e. the Masons.

Richard Strauss is given the new title of “Commander-in-Chief of Austrian Music.”

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Today -100: January 12, 1925: Of pardons and tommy guns

County Attorney Tinkham Veale, which is evidently a real name, will have Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son arrested immediately after his term ends today (the governor’s term, not the son’s) for taking bribes in exchange for pardons. All of his pardons (the governor’s, not the son’s) are being looked into, as well they should be.

If no one can form a majority cabinet in Germany, President Friedrich Ebert may use emergency powers to appoint a chancellor to operate without Reichstag support.

In Chicago, Al Capone’s car is shot up by gangsters with tommy guns, as was the custom. (Correction: Actually it wasn’t yet the custom. This is the very first use of a Thompson submachine gun in gang warfare.) Capone wasn’t in the car at the time, but inside a restaurant whose name I’ve been unable to discover. Capone will soon buy an expensive bullet-proof car. And have a few people killed in retaliation. As was the custom.

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Today -100: January 11, 1925: If unsophisticated natures, secretaries of state, and locals

The Allies give in to the US’s demand that it get a share in the reparations Germany will pay under the Dawes Plan, despite never having ratified the Versailles Treaty.

Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis attributes his son’s taking that bribe in exchange for a pardon, which he calls “indiscreet acts,” to his “unsophisticated nature.” Russell Davis apologizes for being “led into such a trap.” The state Justice Dept was already investigating other pardons. Convicted murderer Glenn Davis (no relation) says Gov. Davis refused him a pardon after he refused to pay a bribe (which he couldn’t afford).

The Kansas Supreme Court rules that the Ku Klux Klan is illegally operating as a business in the state, selling Klan paraphernalia and whatnot, and not as a benevolent society, and so cannot continue without a charter. What are the chances of it being issued a charter? Well, at the last election it tried and failed to defeat two of the Charter Board’s three members, the attorney general and secretary of state, so...

Charles Evans Hughes resigns as secretary of state so he can make some big lawyer bucks. He’ll be replaced by Ambassador to the UK Frank Kellogg.

Pres. Coolidge rejects the objections of Michigan congresscritters to his nomination of Charles Warren from that state to be attorney general. They think that there’s a home-state senator veto over appointments; he tells them there isn’t.

Local anesthesia is progressing. In a story suspiciously lacking the name of the patient or the hospital, a patient smoked a cigar and drank a highball while his appendix was being removed.

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Today -100: January 10, 1925: Somehow they inveigled my son into accepting the money

The Kansas City Journal reports that Gov. Jonathan Davis’s son Russell (whose age I can NOT discover) took a $1,250 bribe in exchange for his father pardoning Fred Pollman, a former bank president convicted of forgery in 1920, who is out of jail but still on parole. The money was passed in a room at the National Hotel in Topeka while various reporters, a shorthand reporter, a state rep., prison and, for some reason, prohibition officials, were in another room listening in on a telephonic bug, all of whom confronted Russell when he returned. Russell says his father knew nothing about the bribe.  Pollman, who set Russell up, also accuses the governor of personally soliciting a bribe in another case, a man convicted of murder in 1911. Gov. Davis says it was all a frame-up; “Somehow they inveigled my son into accepting the money,” but when he realized what was going on he went back to the hotel to return the money and hand Pollman the pardon, which the governor had, coincidentally, already decided to grant (or, just possibly, to receive the rest of the bribe, which was a “$1,000 now, $250 on delivery” deal). This is nonsense: if Little Russell had intended to give back the money he would have actually had it on him, which he did not. 

Davis lost his re-election bid, so he’ll be out of office in a few days.

Coolidge nominates Charles Beecher Warren, former ambassador to Japan and Mexico, to be attorney general. There are rumors that Oliver Wendell Holmes will also retire soon. He is, after all, 83. In fact, Holmes will retire at 90 in 1932.

Mussolini’s draft election-reform law includes plural voting, with extra votes for teachers, clergy, secondary-school graduates, retired army & navy officers and Fascist militiamen, journalists, people who pay 100 lire in taxes, fathers of 5 sons, members of the royal family, etc etc. The complicated changes probably mean a new election can’t be organized for many months.

Dr. John Galen Locke, Grand Dragon of the Colorado Ku Klux Klan, is arrested on a charge of kidnapping 15-year-old high school student Keith Boehm and forcing him into a marriage, threatening him with mutilation if he didn’t. Warrants are issued for the actual kidnappers. Locke’s $1,000 bond is paid by Governor-Elect Clarence Morley, who always denied being a Klan member but is totally a Klan member.

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Today -100: January 9, 1925: The constitutional mask of normalization has fallen

The California Legislature ratifies the Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Congress to regulate child labor, the second state to ratify after Arizona.

The “Aventine” opposition deputies decide to continue boycotting the Italian Parliament. They issue a manifesto accusing Mussolini of being, you know, Mussolini, of suppressing personal liberty, crushing the free press, trampling on the law, tolerating violence by his followers, and the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. “The constitutional mask of normalization has fallen.” They will boycott the election if the government dissolves the Chamber without resigning first.

The former German and Bavarian royal families reconcile, with Wilhelm giving permission for Bavarian ex-prince Rupprecht to run as a monarchist, but for “Reich Governor,” which is not a thing, rather than president.

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Today -100: January 8, 1925: Of parks, “elections,” binghams, and ciggies

Robert Moses, president of the Long Island State Park Commission, complains about rich people obstructing his plans for a park on the South Shore in order to protect their exclusive golf club. As Moses was negotiating to purchase the old Taylor estate from its heirs, the richie-rich golfers swooped in and made a better offer; Moses appropriated the property, as was his custom, and now it’s being fought out in court.

Mussolini is planning another general election, but only after the Matteotti murder trial, which will of course totally absolve The Duck of any responsibility. Some of the opposition papers are coming out again, but leaving out any actual news.

Hiram Bingham III is sworn in as governor of Connecticut, and despite planning to resign after less than 24 hours to take up his seat in the US Senate, has the nerve to have a parade, and an inaugural ball, and an inaugural address, which is a long one, opposing turning the Ag College into a university, calling for reduced taxes, acquiring land for a seaside sanatorium, banning highway billboards, etc. He has a lot of opinions.

Incoming North Dakota Gov. Arthur Sorlie calls for the repeal of the anti-cigarette law.

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Today -100: January 7, 1925: Of postal pay, plane sizess, and political prisoners

The Senate sustains by one vote Coolidge’s veto of a bill raising the pay of postal workers.

Germany tells Allied ambassadors that their decision not to end the occupation of Cologne on schedule violates the Treaty of Versailles. It also says that unless they remove the restrictions on German commercial planes, whose size and power is limited in order to prevent them potentially being turned into military planes, then Germany will put the same restrictions on French planes overflying Germany, and shoot down any that violate those restrictions.

Repression continues in Italy: the government says it has closed 95 clubs, 25 subversive organizations, and 150 cafés, and arrested 111 revolutionaries. 

Germany also has political (Communist) prisoners. Albert Einstein comes out for amnesty.

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Today -100: January 6, 1925: Of explosions of Fascist joy, justices, and resumed administrations

Mussolini purges the last non-Fascist members from his Cabinet, the Liberals Gino Sarrocchi (Minister of Works) and Alessandro Casati (Education). The Liberal Party is now split, with some MPs following former PM Antonio Salandra into opposition, some saying they’ll continue voting with the Fascist government. 

The obnoxious NYT Italian correspondent says Saturday’s “explosion of Fascist joy” – surely the worst kind of joy – has died down.

80-year-old Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna retires after 27 years on the bench. When McKinley appointed him, he had no legal experience, much less judicial, so in the 5 weeks between his nomination and his confirmation he took a crash course at Columbia Law School. Coolidge nominates Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone to replace him. Stone went to Columbia for realsies.

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Taylor Ross tells the state Senate that hers is not a new administration but the resumption of her late husband’s.

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Today -100: January 5, 1925: Of women governors, fucking Fascists, and flesh color

Mrs. Nellie Taylor Ross takes office. The first woman governor in the US. In Wyoming, the first state to give women the vote 35 years before, and the first territory 20 years before that.

Mussolini orders prefects to break up opposition political associations and to close meeting places. Fascists hold parades in many cities joyfully celebrating The Duck’s return to thuggery. Fascist crowds gather outside opposition newspapers to express their displeasure (what’s wrong with a letter-to-the-editor? on some nice stationery?), but police are preventing violence, for now. Officials are confiscating opposition papers regardless of content – including the Milan Giustizia, which appears blank except for ads. 

Palm Beach’s Casino Beach, which presumably already bans the display of women’s legs, adds a ban on white or “flesh”-colored stockings. Also, one-piece bathing suits. The beach censor, which is a real position that someone occupies, is armed with a color chart to determine just what constitutes flesh color.

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Today -100: January 4, 1925: Chivalrous?

Republicans in the New York Legislature are considering abolishing the Motion Picture Censorship Commission, not from any sudden opposition to censorship, but because a Republican member’s term just expired and when Gov. Al Smith replaces them it would have a Democratic majority.

Mussolini says he will “clear up the political situation” within 48 hours so that “the air will again be breathable in Italy.” Well that isn’t ominous-sounding. He says only force can decide between Fascism and the opposition, of whom he says, “We have swallowed their insults and allowed them to call us brigands and assassins. Now before the Chamber, before the whole nation and before God, I alone assume full personal, political, moral and historical responsibility for everything that has occurred in Italy. If Fascism is an association of malefactors [Fact Check: It is] then let it be known that I am head of this association of malefactors.” He denies having created the Italian equivalent of the Cheka [Fact Cheka: He has]: “If I had founded such an organization I would have seen to it that its violence was always intelligent, timely and chivalrous, while the violences attributed to the Cheka which I am accused of founding always have been unintelligent, untimely and stupid.” He says “Please spare me the insult of believing me so stupid as to have ordered” the assassination of Matteotti. The moment has come, he says, to “pass to the counter-offensive.” It’s unclear what this means or what he will do in the next 48 hours. He’s already cracking down on opposition newspapers, which he blames for anti-Fascist violence, and it’s assumed he’ll make some move against the “Aventine” MPs boycotting Parliament, maybe declare a state of siege? Il Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini’s newspaper, says “Oppositions are a thing of the past.”

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx has failed, again, to form a new cabinet containing the center and right-wing parties, will now try to form a non-partisan cabinet which would just kind of hope for the best in getting majority Reichstag support for its various policies.

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Today -100: January 3, 1925: We must correct our blunder here

France asks the US for a ten-year moratorium on paying its war debt and then 80 years to pay it off.

French oncologist Jean Alban Bergonié dies. He experimented with radiation as a treatment for cancer, irradiating rat testicles (that wasn’t science, that was just for fun, probably) and gave himself cancer. All sorts of cancer. One hand had to be amputated, then the arm, then 3 fingers on the other hand. He dies of lung cancer.

Mikhail Kalinin, chair of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, signs a decree telling the USSR’s constituent republics to re-do elections at the local level that “gave undesirable results.” “We must correct our blunder here.”

Those 15 Republican state senators who fled Rhode Island in June will end their exile as the General Assembly term expires. They were successful in their goal of preventing the Legislature accomplishing anything, including paying state employees.

The Italian government seizes a bunch of newspapers that printed that a Fascist army was marching on Rome, like that could ever happen. There are violent incidents in various cities, about which the NYT is somewhat vague, not that I’d believe its correspondent after they referred to anti-Fascists as “subversives.”

Bartolomeo Vanzetti of Sacco & Vanzetti fame is sent to an insane asylum.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 2, 1925: Of rhinos

The Duke of York (grandfather of King Charles) shoots a charging rhinoceros.

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Today -100: January 1, 1925: Party like it’s 1624

Italian police seize issues of at least 11 newspapers and raid the houses of opposition leaders. The government is claiming it’s searching for secret arms caches and for money sent from France to overthrow the Fascist regime.

Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone says the Justice Dept concluded 80,000 cases in 1924, 46,000 of which were Prohibition cases.

The Tuskegee Institute says there were only 16 lynchings in the US in 1924. 5 in Florida, 2 in Georgia, 1 each in Illinois, Kentucy, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. All 16 lynchees were black.

The capital of Norway, Christiania, is renamed Oslo, which was the name used until 1624.

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Today -100: December 31, 1924: Of total bankruptcies and debt

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann says “If the Entente persists in the policy indicated by the refusal to evacuate the Cologne zone on Jan. 10 it will mean the total bankruptcy of the Dawes plan.” He asserts that Germany is now fully disarmed: “All statements to the contrary are fairy tales.” They have some weird-ass fairy tales in Germany.

Congresscritters think France means to repudiate its war debt to the US. The Senate is thinking of advising banks not to make any more loans to France until it makes arrangements to pay up.

Turkey will confiscate the property of Greeks, whether citizens of Greece or of Turkey itself, in retaliation for alleged mistreatment of Muslims in Thrace and something or other about Muslim property in Greece.

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Today -100: December 30, 1924: When jury duty is jury pleasure

A San Juan, Puerto Rico prohibition case ends in a mistrial after the quart bottle of evidence mysteriously disappears. And by mysteriously disappears, I mean the jury... evaluated... whether it met the 0.5% alcohol threshold, until it was all gone.

Mussolini is again implicated in Fascist violence, including the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, by the leak of a memo from one of his top lieutenants, Cesare Rossi.

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Today -100: December 29, 1924: Of eclairs

Prime Minister Édouard Herriot brings espionage law charges against the newspaper Eclair for publishing a report from Gen. Marie Nollet from a few months ago complaining about Germany’s secret rearming. A day earlier Eclair (why am I getting hungry?) printed the minutes of a June meeting between Herriot & Ramsay MacDonald in which the former did not look good. All of the French press is pissed at Herriot for acting against a newspaper.

We know there are just 2 living survivors from the audience in Ford’s Theatre on the night Lincoln was assassinated, but what about the cast? Actor Jennie Ross, who had a small role, dies at 91 in her home from a gas leak or something. Born Jennie Anderson, she later married Civil War general W.E.W. Ross.

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Today -100: December 28, 1924: Of morally disarming, contracts, and horses

Britain, France, Japan, Italy and Belgium agree not to end the occupation of Cologne because Germany has been a very naughty boy and tried to secretly manufacture rifles and machine guns. The London Sunday Times and the Observer accuse Germany of failing to “morally disarm.”

Texas Governor-Elect Miriam Ferguson petitions the district court to remove the legal disability on her as a married woman to make contracts so she can sign contracts as governor without facing legal challenges.

From July, it will be illegal to drive a horse in downtown Los Angeles. Jaywalking will also be banned and pedestrians must raise an arm to indicate their intention to cross the road.

Austrian Socialists and the right-wing Catholic Christian Social Party both urge their followers to join the army, in a struggle for dominance of the army. The Socialists want to determine whether the army will resist monarchist or Communist putsches or put down strikes.

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Today -100: December 27, 1924: Look what Santa brought

Albania: The forces of Ahmet Zogu occupy Tirana on Christmas Day. Bishop-Prime Minister Fan Noli and his Cabinet flee into the night, carrying only the clothes on their back, probably, and all the government’s gold. Zogu enters the capital on horseback, as was the custom.

Fighting his annulment suit against his bride Alice, rich douche Leonard Kip Rhinelander opposes paying her alimony and lawyers’ fees pending the trial. The judge seems sympathetic to giving her some of that, not as much as she asked, after Rhinelander’s lawyer answers in the affirmative to the question “Are you going to attempt to prove the defendant has negro blood in her veins?” Such a genealogy search, tracing the roots of her West Indian grandfather (who her father evidently never knew) would be expensive, the judge observes. Tomorrow he’ll award her $300 a month and $3,000 for her lawyers.

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Today -100: December 26, 1924: A heart-warming Christmas story

A Spanish woman promised the Virgin of Carmel that if her soldier son came home safely from Morocco she’d take her own life. He does and she does.

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