Today -100: February 5, 1925: The Malice of Mortimer

The Senate will consider the Supreme Court nomination of Harlan Fiske Stone in open session.

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau Charles Forbes and contractor John Thompson are sentenced to 2 years in prison and fined $10,000. Forbes and Thompson claim to be the victim of the “malice of Mortimer,” the informer Elias Mortimer, who was a middleman in the bribe deal and claims Forbes slept with his wife.

VP Charles Dawes finally explains why he refused Coolidge’s offer to sit in on Cabinet meetings: the president should only have people there who he trusts, so establishing a precedent that veeps sit in the Cabinet might prove embarrassing for a future president who doesn’t trust his veep.

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Today -100: February 4, 1925: Undesirable

Headline of the Day -100:

A bill before the Indian Legislative Assembly would treat as inferior races all countries that treat Indians as an inferior race. Meaning the United States, of course. And Japan, working on legalizing land ownership by foreigners, is considering whether it’s practical to exclude from that right people from US states that ban Japanese people owning land.

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Today -100: February 3, 1925: Of serums and amnesties

Well, the dog-sleds with the diphtheria antitoxic finally reach Nome, but it’s frozen solid.

Prussian Minister-President (prime minister) Otto Braun resigns again, after failing to construct a coalition or at least get neutrality from the People’s Party.

The USSR amnesties those who fought on the other side in the Civil War. In the Northern Caucasus anyway. The government says they’ve all realized their mistake.

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Today -100: February 2, 1925: The glory that was Hapsburg is gone

Headline of the Day -100:  

The second Edwin James front-page article in two days shitting on Austria.

A blizzard prevents the dog-sleds carrying diphtheria antitoxic reaching Nome, Alaska.

Sears, Roebuck & Co. open their first store, in Chicago, 33 years after starting life as a mail-order company.

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Today -100: February 1, 1925: Of patriarchs and man’s faith in his superiority

Greece protests Turkey’s expulsion from Constantinople of the Greek Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Constantinos, saying it’s a treaty violation. Greece implicitly threatens war by not releasing the 1923 class of conscripts.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: January 31, 1925: Of fraud, renegades, and bananas

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, Charles Forbes, the biggest crook in the Harding Administration, is convicted, along with contractor John Thompson, of defrauding the government in contracts for vets’ hospitals.

Coolidge supports the Congressional Republican decision not to allow supporters of La Follette in the 1924 election back into the caucus. Fiorello La Guardia is particularly defiant.

Otto Braun (Social Democrat) is back as Minister-President (prime minister) of Prussia after the (Catholic) Zentrum Party fails to come to a coalition agreement with the right-wing and fascist parties.

Honduras will ban black immigrants. Banana companies have been using them to undercut wages. It doesn’t say where they’re importing them from.

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Today -100: January 30, 1925: But mostly the assassination thing

New York City Comptroller/Controller Charles L. Craig has been feuding with mayors for 8 years because he is an obnoxious petty little bitch (here’s his 1935 obituary). Anyway, at a Sinking Fund Commission meeting, he tries to have NY Mayor John Hylan arrested for disorderly conduct (i.e., calling him a liar). Hylan’s bodyguard declines Craig’s order to arrest him.

Before sending Trotsky to southern Russia for his, um, health, after firing him as war minister, Stalin has all his papers confiscated.

Albania keeps trying to get foreigners to come and be king. The latest to turn them down: Sir Charles Edward Archibald Watkin Hamilton (that’s just one person, I think) and Lord Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn Headley (probably 3 or 4 people). Headley, whose title is Irish, is the president of the British Moslem Society. He notes that the monarch position has no salary “and the almost certainty of assassination.” Also, they didn’t meet his financial terms.

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Today -100: January 29, 1925: Oh I think it made some difference

The president of the British Optical Association, W.R. Baker, warns against eyestrain from doing crossword puzzles.

Harlan Fiske Stone’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is held in open session. He answers questions about the DOJ prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler for “conspiracy,” including why a 2nd prosecution was in DC when the first was in Montana, where all the witnesses are. The NYT, at least, is entirely satisfied with Stone’s answers, asserting, “Whether the man whose prosecution he thought necessary was a Senator or a colored janitor made no difference to him.”

Nome, Alaska has a diphtheria outbreak. Antitoxin is being rushed there by dog sled. Should take a couple of weeks. 

Gloria Swanson marries Henri, the Marquis de la Falaise, her translator on “Madame Sans-Gêne,” a lost film which is being shot in France. This is the 25-year-old Swanson’s third marriage, but by no means her last.

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Today -100: January 28, 1925: Of child labor

The Constitutional Amendment permitting Congressional regulation of child labor has now been defeated by enough states that it cannot be ratified. Arguments against: it goes against states’ rights; it goes against parental rights; kids are perfectly well protected already; cotton mills need child labor; farms need child labor.

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Today -100: January 27, 1925: A Harlan Stone gathers no... no, that doesn’t really work, does it?

The Senate, in a secret session, an hour of which was spent complaining about all the leaks from the last secret session, which we know because of, you know, leaks, sends Harlan Fiske Stone’s Supreme Court nomination back to the Judiciary Committee. He will be called before the committee to explain his indictment of Sen. Burton Wheeler. It will be the first time a nominee to the Court ever had to testify, which is why we don’t know if the first 72 justices liked beer.

Coolidge wants the budget reduced to $3 billion, with all the savings going to tax cuts.

The Texas Senate rejects ratification of the Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Congress to regulate child labor, by a vote of 19 to 2.

Arthur Conan Doyle is opening a psychic bookshop. Near Westminster Abbey.

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Today -100: January 26, 1925: Of shoot-outs and immunity

Remember Herrin, Illinois, the location of so much Klan-related violence and nonsense last year? A shoot-out takes the lives of 6, evenly from both sides I think, including Glenn Young, the man employed by the Klan as a dry-raider who was briefly chief of police (I don’t think I knew at the time that that was during a day when the real chief of police had been kidnapped), and Deputy Sheriff Ora Thomas, the head of the anti-Klux faction, who shoot each other to death. It’s not clear which side fired first.

Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone is messing up his nomination to the Supreme Court by pursuing an obviously partisan, groundless conspiracy prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler, who led the investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal. Stone has offered to allow Wheeler to testify and to have his own witnesses at the DC Grand Jury – if, and only if, he waives his congressional immunity.

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Today -100: January 25, 1925: Of eclipses, the moral opinion of the community, wide-bottom trousers, earls, and torrios

There’s an eclipse. Which is evidently a huge deal. Someone needs to hurry up and invent television.

Pres. Coolidge repeats his support for the US joining the World Court. He says the Court doesn’t even need a military to enforce its decrees because it can do so through “intelligence of the mass of individuals and the moral opinion of the community.” Sure, let’s try that.

Coolidge also expresses his opinion on wide-bottom trousers, which college men are wearing these days, and he does not approve. DOES NOT APPROVE.

Former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is made an earl, the first Earl of Oxford and Asquith, which is another way of saying he’s given up on leading the Liberals back into power, which he can’t do from the House of Lords. Or from the Commons, where he lost his seat at the last election.

Chicago mob boss Johnny Torrio is shot five times in front of his home, a week after being convicted of Prohibition law crimes. This will precipitate his decision to retire, for a time anyway.

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Today -100: January 24, 1925: Covering his Butt

Prussian Minister-President (prime minister) Otto Braun and his cabinet resign, despite still holding a majority of the Diet, under an onslaught from the Communists and the Monarchists.

There’s a military coup in Chile, as was the custom.

A visiting British theatrical producer says American plays need a censor to curb their “daring outspokenness.” That producer: Sir Alfred Butt.

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Today -100: January 23, 1925: Of governors, leagues, kiddie workers, and radio

The Fergusons move into the Executive Mansion in Austin. Gov. Ma supervises the movers, saying she can be governor and housekeeper at the same time. Friends of her husband, the disgraced former governor, are suggesting to him that his hanging around the governor’s office every day is undermining her.

Costa Rica withdraws from the League of Nations, the first, but not the last, country to do so. I think they just found the dues to be too onerous.

The Oklahoma House rejects the child labor amendment to the US Constitution.

Theatrical producer Lee Shubert says the novelty of radio will wear off and people will return to the theatre.

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Today -100: January 22, 1925: It will be human

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson calls on the Legislature to cut taxes and to remove the Texas Rangers from Prohibition work (previous Gov. Pat Neff was a bit of a dry fanatic). She wants a tax on smoking.

The South Dakota State Senate and the Delaware House reject the Child Labor Amendment to the US Constitution.

A new magazine, The New Yorker, will appear next month. “It will be human,” says the announcement. “It will be what is commonly called sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. It will hate bunk.”

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Today -100: January 21, 1925: No bouquet

The Senate votes 40-30 to condemn the Harding Administration’s selling of the Teapot Dome leases. This finishes the matter as far as the Senate is concerned.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Hey, you know what might take the edge off?  A little opium. Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, the chief rep of (checks notes) Britain, rejects the US proposal for a goal of ending opium smoking in the Far East within 15 years, which he says would just be a farce. He is, however, forced to withdraw the comment he made yesterday that the US uses more opium & other narcotics than India, where they grow the stuff.

Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson is sworn in as governor of Texas, taking the traditional oath not to participate in any duels. “She carried no bouquet.”

During a trial of 10 Jersey City cops & 2 others, Sen. Edward Edwards (D-NJ), a man so almost nice they named him almost twice, is accused by a federal agent of being a bootlegger who was paid $3,800 for 100 cases of whisky in a sting operation. The deal fell through before any booze was delivered. Some of the testimony is a little implausible. The senator hasn’t been called as a witness (and won’t be).

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes tells Latin American countries that they should also adopt the Monroe Doctrine, which certainly isn’t about maintaining US hegemony in the hemisphere, perish the thought. Also, the failure to end the US occupation of Nicaragua is because the Nicaraguan president asked us to stay, and we’ll withdraw those marines from Haiti just as soon as there’s “a reasonable prospect of peace and stability.”

Leon Trotsky is (finally) fired as the minister of war. He is accused of expressing anti-, or at least non-Communist views. And he refused to acknowledge his mistakes. REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS MISTAKES.

A Connecticut man who owns a cat that can predict storms will offer him to Pres. Coolidge.

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Today -100: January 20, 1925: No practical work can be accomplished by yelling

Hans Luther appears before the Reichstag as German chancellor for the first time, to continuous interruptions from Communist deputies. Pissed off, he tells them, “I think I voice the feelings of the entire body when I tell you that no practical work can be accomplished by yelling.” Boy, he doesn’t know his country very well, does he.

The B’nai Sholem Temple Israel of Chicago is bombed, but it’s not anti-semitism: the temple was just sold to a black congregation.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, that’s actually Sol Bloom and not, as the NYT Index would have it, Sloom, because “Congressman Sloom Has Quinsy” sounds like a lesser Dr. Seuss book (today -100, by the way, Theodor Geisel is still at Dartmouth, a few months from adopting the moniker Dr. Seuss so he could secretly continue publishing in the college humor magazine after being caught hosting a gin party and possibly peeing out the window [he said it was seltzer] and being banned by Dean Craven Laycock – which is more... Dickens? Wodehouse?... than Seuss, really – from extracurriculars).

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Today -100: January 19, 1925: Be ready for a fight

Leon Trotsky is fired from the War Council. He is threatened, if he continues to show “disobedience,” with removal from the Politburo and Executive Committee. 

The NYT claims the election of Miriam “Ma” Ferguson as governor of Texas is the death knell for the Ku Klux Klan in that state. The Legislature is considering a bill to make assault by masked people punishable by death. 

Sunday was rally day in Germany, with Communists in Berlin rocking the slogan “Revolution is what we need,” and monarchists in Magdeburg told to “Be ready for a fight.” The Communists signify their opposition to the Dawes Plan with a man in an Uncle Sam costume leading a German worker by a chain.

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Today -100: January 18, 1925: Of tainted or perverted information, dancingest inaugurations, and sacramental wine

Coolidge warns a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors against propaganda: “Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much, but of propaganda which is tainted or perverted information we cannot have too little.”

Italy’s Parliament passes Mussolini’s electoral reform bill by 268 to 19, but strips the plural voting provisions, which I guess even Mussolini realized tipped power to the upper classes too much at the expense of the working classes. So it’s mostly about returning to single-member constituencies from proportional representation.

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will be sworn in as governor of Texas Tuesday and it will be the “dancingest” inauguration ever, despite the protests of certain church ladies. But there will be no Texas Rangers, because that body was just declared by a court to have been illegally constituted.

The Denver Catholic diocese says it will defy the new law against sacramental wine.

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Today -100: January 17, 1925: Of prohibition and ag

Coolidge thinks a proposed law providing for mandatory imprisonment for violating Prohibition laws is excessive.

Herbert Hoover declines to become secretary of agriculture, saying he can do more for farmers from Commerce.

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