Today -100: April 13, 1925: Painlevé feels the... levé

Paul Painlevé gives up on forming a French government, so it’s Aristide Briand’s turn to make an attempt.

Last Friday, Coolidge opined that the French government’s financial difficulties were not Herriot’s fault but inherited by him from previous governments. The French consider this unacceptable interference in their politics. (Of course these days J.D. Vance, if that is his real name, can lecture European countries on being unfair to fascist parties).

Newfoundland women get the vote from the age of 25 (men have it at 21).

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Today -100: April 12, 1925: Painlevé brings the... levé

Paul Painlevé of the Parti républicain-socialiste will be the next French prime minister, a job he briefly held in 1917. Aristide Briand, another former PM (I mean, who in the Interwar period wasn’t prime minister at some point?), will be foreign secretary.

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Today -100: April 11, 1925: Rolling eggs? In this economy?

The traditional White House Easter egg roll will take place this year, despite being on the birthday of Calvin Coolidge Jr., who died last July.

The Earl of Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, is greeted in Damascus by a riotous mob which forces him to skedaddle out of town.

French PM Édouard Herriot resigns after losing a vote in the Senate on exceeding the legal limit on the circulation of bank notes. He was in office 10 months.

Roberto Farinacci, secretary of the National Fascist Party of Italy and basically the #2 man in Italy after The Duck, for now, responds to recent Fascist-Communist violence by calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty and for exile “to one of Italy’s islands” for enemies of Fascism. He names several deputies and senators he’d like arrested.

More violence in Herrin, Illinois, in the lead up to the mayoral election, but it’s Klan-on-Klan violence, so that’s okay. The store of Marshal McCormack, a kluxer candidate opposed by other kluxers, is dynamited.

Klansmen in Jasper, Alabama are being sentenced for flogging a hotel clerk who “talked about” the Klan.

The National Geographic Society thinks the Arctic expedition it’s sponsoring, led by Donald MacMillan, will find a whole new continent somewhere between Alaska and the North Pole. The use of Navy planes will make possible a summer Arctic trip, which should make visibility much easier (Spoiler Alert: it won’t).

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Today -100: April 10, 1925: Of typical expressions, confidence, copyrights, and boats against the current

The German right-wing parties know that the best way to keep presidential candidate Field Marshal von Hindenburg popular is to keep him quiet, so he’ll only be making a few speeches, mostly in Bavaria. Nationalists surround his house to keep reporters away from him – when did Hindenburg start to go visibly senile, anyway? surely not this soon? The NYT observes: “Political sentimentality is not lacking. ‘Our father Hindenburg, like children he led us back from the war-torn front to our homes and it is thanks to him that civil war was avoided in Germany,’ is a typical expression.” Ludendorff seems to have given up his own presidential run to back his former boss, presumably after the Bavarian Nazis decline to nominate him.

French PM Édouard Herriot wins a vote of confidence, though with a large number of abstentions, after a fight in the National Assembly over the increase of currency and Herriot saying he was bound to secrecy not to disclose that the government account at the Bank of France was over the legal limit and... oh, more stuff like that.

The 6th Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rules that radio stations can’t infringe copyrights on songs. It rules against the argument that radio broadcasts are not performances in the legal sense. Consider yourself warned, WKRP.

London theatres are experiencing a shortage of blonde chorus girls, as the trend toward bobbing means fewer women are dyeing their hair.

Speaking of bobbed hair, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is published. Spoiler Alert: 

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Today -100: April 9, 1925: Each year there are a million more Poles in the world

Paul von Hindenburg will run for president of Germany after all, backed by all the right-wing monarchist parties. He evidently agreed only after receiving a letter from ex-kaiser Wilhelm, which is believed to have relieved him of his oath to the monarchy. The Deutsche Volkspartei of Gustav Stresemann and is brought into line behind the former field marshal by threats from the big financial interests to destroy the party.

French PM Édouard Herriot threatens to resign after losing a vote in the Senate he had made a matter of confidence – a $20,000 appropriation for secondary scholarships, of all things – but then fails to resign. The Cabinet spends the evening discussing the price of bread, “which tends to show that whatever else Premier Herriot has lost he has preserved his sense of humor.” Really, all of Herriot’s financial plans, including a forced levy on capital, look like failing.

Polish War Minister Władysław Sikorski says Poland won’t give up an inch of its territory to either Germany or Russia and “gave an enthusiastic account of the ability of Poland to protect herself.” For example, “each year there are a million more Poles in the world. ...it will not be easy to crush Poland, with her 30 million inhabitants.”

Labor Secretary James “Puddler Jim” Davis foresees a time when labor and management understand that strikes and lock-outs are just silly. It’s all cooperation now, he says.

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Today -100: April 8, 1925: Of tariffs and women’s suffrage

Coolidge seems to be content – I started to write happy, but it’s hard to picture Silent Cal as happy; oo, complacent, that’s better – about the existing rate of tariffs and rejects increasing them still further.

The French Chamber of Deputies votes 389 to 140 to give women the right to vote in municipal and cantonal elections, and to hold office. Now it’s up to the Senate, which has always killed women’s suffrage bills in the past, and will kill this one.

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Today -100: April 7, 1925: Of thrilled dark Africans, petty motives, and hindenburgs

Headline of the Day -100:

The prince of Wales in Sierra Leone. That didn’t start out well with “Dark Africa,” but “mammies with babies”? Jesus.

The Earl of Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, visiting Palestine, says it is “preposterous that Jews and Arabs were unable to live together in harmony,” and any controversy comes from petty motives and should be stopped at once, at once I say.

Western Australia votes against prohibition, 65% to 35.

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg says he won’t run for president of Germany after hearing that Gustav Stresemann, former chancellor and current head of the Deutsche Volkspartei, won’t back him. So the right-wing is stuck with Karl Jarres, maybe?

Hitler formally renounces his Austrian citizenship. He is now stateless.

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Today -100: April 6, 1925: Of anthropoid apes and the divorce evil

North Carolina University cancels a planned series of lectures by U. of Berlin prof Wolfgang Köhler on “The Intelligence of Anthropoid Apes,” afraid that the subject might be close enough to evolution to provoke members of the Legislature. The University of Tennessee also cancels lectures, I think also by Köhler, who will emigrate permanently to the US, and a professorship at Swarthmore College, in 1935 after his refusal to begin his lectures with a Nazi salute and his public opposition to the firing of Jewish professors doesn’t go over so well.

A New Jersey Knight of Columbus calls the Ku Klux Klan cowardly and suggests they do something about “the divorce evil,” by which they mean the recent addition of cruelty as a ground for divorce in the state.

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Today -100: April 5, 1925: Of crown princes and fair bathers

The right-wing German parties unite behind Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg for the 2nd round of the presidential election. He was not in the first round and in fact has not dabbled in politics since the end of the war, but he is thought to be a stronger candidate than Karl Jarres, who won a plurality in the 1st round. Also, some Bavarian monarchists wouldn’t get behind Jarres. Hindenburg is 77.

One source of chaos in the German right has retreated, a bit: Bavaria’s Prince Rupprecht

backs off his claim to the German throne (but will retain his claim to be King of Bavaria until his death in 30 years). He admits that the north wouldn’t put up with a Catholic kaiser. So the monarchists are now united behind former crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm.

Atlantic City Mayor Edward Bader says this summer women won’t be required to wear hosiery on the beach, though their skirts must be at least 11 inches long. He sees his as a concession to “contrary” “fair bathers.”

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Today -100: April 4, 1925: Of sex-klansmen, student rioters, and lily white primaries

NYT Summary of the Day -100: 

D.C. Stephenson, former Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan but not an ex-klansman, having formed his own Klan in the mid-western states, which have the largest number of kluxers. Also, “prominent in Republican circles” downplays his power; he has the same relationship to the Republican Indiana government as Elon Musk has to the Republican national government. Anyway, Stephenson has been indicted for the kidnapping and assault & battery (rape) of Madge Oberholtzer last month. More on this anon.

The chief justice of the DC Supreme Court throws out the indictments against former interior secretary Albert Fall and oil barons Sinclair & Doheny for bribery and defrauding the US government, on the grounds that Assistant Attorney Gen. Oliver Pagan (!) was in the room with the special grand jury investigating the Tea Pot Dome leases.

Some of the striking university students in Paris are tried for rioting. Students sentenced to brief prison sentences will be given political-prisoner status.

The NAACP will challenge the 1923 Texas law banning negroes voting in the Democratic primary (I didn’t mention it here, which I suspect means the NYT didn’t cover it). It will sue on behalf of a black doctor, Lawrence Nixon. In 1927 the US Supreme Court will rule that the law violated the 14th Amendment, so Texas will change the law so that parties, rather than the Legislature, could set their own racist rules. The Supreme Court (1935) will have no problem with this, though it will reverse itself in 1944 (when Dr. Nixon will vote in the Democratic primary).

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Today -100: April 3, 1925: Of bank notes, idiots, coalitions, and deaf drivers

French Finance Minister Etienne Clémentel resigns after announcing without authorization that the government will increase the number of bank notes in circulation (which the Cabinet had decided on) (this is about a genuine practical need for more notes, not a Weimar-type inflationary thing). This is more important than it sounds. Probably.

There’s a fistfight in the Italian Parliament, as was the custom. First an ex-Fascist deputy complains about Fascist violence at a local election, then punches a Fascist who yells “Idiot” at him. Then yadda yadda yadda, biff bash boom, resulting in 6 challenges to duels.

The German Social Democrats (SPD), Democrats (DDP), and the Catholic Zentrum party agree to unite as the “Weimar Coalition” behind Wilhelm Marx (Zentrum) in the 2nd round of the presidential election, although the SPD is holding off making it official to ensure the other 2 parties back Otto Braun in tomorrow’s vote for PM of Prussia.

The New Jersey attorney general says deaf people can get driving licenses.

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Today -100: April 2, 1925: Of thurtles and worthingtons

The federal Prohibition Unit and the enforcement units of the Coast Guard and Customs will be consolidated under Ass’t Treasury Secretary Col. Lincoln Clark Andrews.

French university students declare a strike in 18 universities over the suspension of the dean of the Paris Law Faculty, who doesn’t want a strike and says his suspension was kinda justified. Sometimes I think French students just like to strike.

The House of Commons votes 320-156 to reject an amendment offered by a Labour MP with the unfortunate name Ernest Thurtle (Angela Lansbury’s uncle) to abolish capital punishment in the army. Mr. Thurtle points out that the argument that the threat of execution is needed to keep the troops in line under fire is refuted by the exemplary performance during the Great War of soldiers from Australia, whose government blocked capital punishment. Secretary of State for War Sir Laming Worthington-Evans responds... you know, I don’t care what he said, I just wanted to get that name in here.

The House of Assembly of Bermuda, which still has a property-owning qualification for the franchise, rejects an act to establish women’s suffrage.

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Today -100: April 1, 1925: Of bear ribs, Herriot’s Trump moment, states of debauchery, and super-persons

Rumors from Russia, of the sort that the NYT loves to publish with no collaboration, say that Trotsky has been permanently disappeared. The government is putting out a story that he’s escaped the country, but those rumors say this is just a smokescreen. None of this is true.

Curious just which North Dakota Indian tribe adopted Pres. Coolidge under the name “Bear Ribs,” I quickly gave up when my web search turned up actual recipes.

There’s been rioting, actual rioting, in the Latin Quarter of Paris – I assume the slogans were all shouted in Latin – over the Ministry of Education appointing Georges Scelle to a lectureship on international law at the Paris Law Faculty, slightly bypassing seniority. SLIGHTLY BYPASSING SENIORITY! His lectures have been disrupted by the proto-fascist Action Française’s student group, who claim favoritism and of course that the Masons were behind the appointment, leading the Ministry to close the faculty and suspend the dean for failing to keep order. In the National Assembly discussion of this, Prime Minister Édouard Herriot loudly comments about a deputy who is shouting and “gesticulating freely,” calling him “epileptic,” without, he claims, realizing it’s a guy who had a head injury during the war. Hilarity ensues.

Sen. Burton Wheeler says the witnesses against him at the grand jury were “herded into a hotel by Government agents who fed them booze and drank with them to a state of debauchery” for 3 weeks, during which the foreman was arrested for drunk driving. I guess that explains the odd pause in the hearings.

The 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference closes with a resolution that “persons whose progeny give promise of being of decided value to the community should be encouraged to bear as large families, properly spaced, as they feasibly can.” Roswell Johnson, the geologist who offers the resolution, says “super-persons” have a moral responsibility to have children. Margaret Sanger criticizes Theodore Roosevelt Jr. for calling birth control advocates hoggish, selfish and bad citizens (I can’t verify Tee Arr Jay Arr’s exact original words).

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Today -100: March 31, 1925: More difficult to manage

Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus will drop all wild animal acts (unless you count elephants, horses and such). They’ll continue to be displayed in the menagerie, but not perform or be walked across the street. Jack Ringling admits that people think the bears and giant cats are trained by cruel methods and name-calling (one of the black jaguars is called Nigger because of course it is), and that parents are afraid their children will see animal trainers eaten or whatever. Mabel Stark has transferred from performing with the 14 Bengal tigers to the equestrian side of things: “‘I find the horses more difficult to manage than the tigers,’ said Miss Stark, a trifle wistfully for one who has been clawed as often as she”.

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Today -100: March 30, 1925: Heh heh, 4 votes

Karl Jarres of the nationalist Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) wins more than 10 million votes in the German presidential election (38%), but not a majority, so there will be a run-off in 4 weeks. Otto Braun (Social Democrat) comes in second with 7.8 million. Erich Ludendorff gets a little over 1%, so all that fuss about him being a spoiler was a waste of everyone’s time. In Coburg, and only there, ex-kaiser Wilhelm was on the ballot. He gets 4 votes. This is the first ever presidential election in Germany, by the way.

The Japanese Diet passes the suffrage bill, extending the franchise to about 14 million from 3 million, but only for men over 30 who are not dependent on charity.

Labour MPs in Britain oppose Vincent Lopez’s band being allowed into the country to perform when there are perfectly good British jazz musicians without jobs.

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Today -100: March 29, 1925: Of socialism, inferior babies, and words

The Socialist Party intends to contest the next NYC elections on a platform of 5¢ transit fare.

The international birth control conference being held in NYC is going seriously off the rails. Neuropathologist Max Schlapp says women who “go about getting themselves excited and overwrought in an emotional way” are producing inferior babies. Clarence Little, president of the University of Maine, compares the different races to soda flavors – strawberry, pineapple, chocolate, etc – and says mixing them together is just icky. Eugenic laws should guide races to blend desired racial characteristics (Little will spend the 1950s and ‘60s shilling for the tobacco industry, denying that smoking causes cancer or any other disease). The delegates pass a resolution calling on eugenic societies to recognize birth control as an essential part of eugenics.

The Oxford English Dictionary is adding phrases from the Great War, such as “strafe,” “dud,” “getting the wind up.” Strafe is defined here as “to punish,” used by British and American military prisoners for short sentences for disobedience. It derives from the German catchphrase “Gott strafe England,” meaning “May God punish England.” The later usage for planes machine-gunning ground positions is a World War II one.

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Today -100: March 28, 1925: Of ear fatigue and grade crossings

Sen. Burton Wheeler is indicted in D.C. on the charge, trumped up in retaliation for his work investigating Teapot Dome, of conspiring to use dummies to get prospecting permits on federal oil & gas lands in Montana beyond the number that individuals are allowed. A Senate committee already exonerated Wheeler on this; the grand jury only had the evidence the committee saw. It’s all a bit weird. The grand jury stopped sitting for 4 weeks, so Wheeler assumed the thing had been abandoned.

Psychologists at Princeton determine that radio produces “ear fatigue.”

NY Gov. Alfred E. Smith wins his 25% tax cut, but the Legislature refuses to increase the length of the gubernatorial term to 4 years from 2, restore direct primaries, restrict factory employment for women to 48 hours, or hold a referendum on the federal child labor constitutional amendment. There will be a referendum in November for a bond issue to eliminate grade crossings.

German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann makes clear that while Germany’s proposed security treaty with France, Britain and Belgium would confirm Germany’s western borders, it would not apply to its eastern borders, because fuck Poland anyway.

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Today -100: March 27, 1925: I’m sure it was a terrible smile

Mussolini’s return to public life after weeks of illness they’re claiming was ulcers and who knows, maybe it was, is celebrated in the Parliament with a fistfight between Fascist and Communist deputies, as was the custom. The Duck smiles as he watches, and The Duck never smiles.

Simplicio and Lucio Godino, Filipino Siamese twins, have learned to drive and seem to enjoy immunity to drive in excess of the Manila speed limit because the cops would have to arrest the innocent one along with the guilty one. The conjoined twins will later marry identical twins.

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Today -100: March 26, 1925: Come and take us

The Delaware Legislature votes 31 to 1 to retain the whipping post as a punishment.

The German right wing, pissed at Ludendorff continuing to run for president against their preferred candidate Karl Jarres, are rolling out his former colleague Hindenburg (who is not yet running) to endorse Jarres. Hitler’s newspaper in Bavaria claims industrialists backing Jarres offered the Hitlerites a bribe to endorse him rather than Ludendorff.

2 Wisconsin state senators, Bernhard Gettelman & James Barker (both R’s), support changing the state law to allow home brew and light wines for consumption at home, and in fact are both in violation of that law. “We make wine in our home and don’t care who knows it,” says Gettleman. “Here is my home address. Come and take us.”

The 6th international birth control conference opens in New York. Margaret Sanger apologizes that some of the delegates had difficulties with Immigration; she notes that US immigration quotas show the “crude method” used to deal with over-population. She suggests that the government should pay unfit parents not to reproduce. The current ban on birth control encourages, “with breakneck rapidity, of idiots, defectives, diseased, feeble-minded and criminal classes. The American public is heavily taxed to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundation of our civilization.”

Oh good, she’s opened a new clinic specifically for black New Yorkers.

The Agriculture Dept studies how to eliminate garlic breath and determines that this can be accomplished by refraining from eating garlic.

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Today -100: March 25, 1925: Of friendly boers, beer halls, normal activities, alsatians, and pay rises

Lord Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, will visit Jerusalem and boy are the Arabs pissed. Students are going on strike and shops will be closed.

The Prince of Wales will visit South Africa, and is assured of a friendly visit from the Boers.

Erich Ludendorff refuses demands that he quit the German presidential race so as not to split the lunatic-right vote. Saturday he’ll have a rally in a Munich beer hall. Yes, that beer hall.

Éamon de Valera is elected to the Ulster Parliament for County Down, unopposed. He is however banned by decree from Northern Ireland, which you’d think being an elected (sort of) official would over-ride, but no.

Charles Hueber, a Communist deputy from Alsace, address the French National Assembly in Alsatian German (his French isn’t great) during a debate on Alsace-Lorraine administration, specifically whether the recovered provinces should be be fully integrated into the French state or have some sort of special status. Some deputies get annoyed that they can’t understand him, others ask to speak in Breton or Provençal.

A Soviet Union court invalidates the Sinclair Oil oil concession on Sakhalin Island, which is in theory divided between Russia and Japan but all of it is de facto occupied by the Japanese. The court says that isn’t an insurmountable obstacle and Sinclair should have begun work by the start of the year regardless. The reason Russia signed the deal with Sinclair was to induce the US government to support Sinclair’s little venture and by extension Russian control of its bit of Sakhalin. This did not happen because the Harding administration’s corrupt links to Sinclair either didn’t extend to the State Dept or didn’t override the US refusal to recognize the Soviet Union (the entity with which Sinclair had that contract), or its unwillingness to risk friction with Japan. By the end of the decade, Japan will be meeting its oil requirements from Sakhalin alone.

The House of Representatives recently raised its own pay by one-third to $10,000. Some pretended to object during the debate, but all but 8 are accepting the raise. The identify of the 8 is as yet unknown, except for Henry St George Tucker III (D-Virginia), whose grandfather, Rep. H St G T Senior, also refused a raise more than a century ago.

Headline of the Day -100:

One shudders to imagine what those might be.

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