Today -100: June 20, 1925: Of Fightin’ Belle La Follette, domes, Dirigo, and jay walking... in Paris? Heaven forfend.

Rep. John Nelson (R-Wisc., one of the two John Nelsons in the 69th Congress) is pushing for a change in Wisconsin state law to allow the governor to appoint Robert La Follette’s widow Isabelle to fill out his Senate term without a special election.

A federal district court judge in Wyoming rules that Sinclair’s Teapot Dome oil leases are valid, which is the opposite of the ruling by the district court in California against the Doheny Elk Hills leases. The judges disagree on whether the secrecy surrounding the deals had any military justification. The Wyoming judge says there is no evidence that Interior Sec. Albert Fall was bribed which, yeah, sure, whatever.

Donald MacMillan is planning an Arctic expedition. Maine Gov. Ralph Brewster throws him a farewell dinner and authorizes him to claim any lands he discovers in the name of... the state of Maine. “It will then remain for the federal government to determine whether it will recognize and protect our rights.”

The Italian Parliament gives Mussolini the power to fire civil servants who dare to hold non-Fascist political opinions, the “Fascistization of the Italian state,” as he likes to call it.

A Paris judge rules that jay walking is legal.

Actress Kathryn du Noule cross-dresses so she can enter that all-male space: a Chicago hanging.

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Today -100: June 19, 1925: Of fightin’ bobs, poles, lynchings, and dog concerts

Fightin’ Bob La Follette, Progressive senator from Wisconsin, dies at 70. Whither the Progressive movement now?

The Roald Amundsen Arctic expedition is no longer missing, returning to Spitzbergen (Svalbard) in Norway. It got within 150, maybe 100 miles of the North Pole by plane but was thwarted by headwinds (and Amundsen’s underestimating how much gas he’d need). It returns without the plane, which turned out to be a seaplane but not so much an iceplane. They didn’t spot any land, so there may in fact not be land at the Pole. Bad luck, Canada, which already put in a claim for any land that might exist.

Near Castle Gate, Utah a black man, Robert Marshall, is lynched by a large mob, including Klansmen, after allegedly killing Town Constable James Milton Burns (whose father was also a law dude killed in action, in his case by sheep rustlers). The mob shoots Marshall a few times and hangs him twice. 11 members of the lynch mob will be arrested, including a deputy who basically handed Marshall over, as well as the city marshal, the superintendent of the Utah Fuel Company, and 4 charged with “pulling the rope.” None of the hundreds of witnesses will testify against them, so that will be that. This was the last lynching in the West. Supposedly it caused the fortunes of the Ku Klux Klan to decline in Utah, but 80% of the black people will leave Carbon County by the 1930 census.

There’s a demonstration in Vienna against a new regulation against bringing dogs on street cars and railways. The dog owners are threatening to hold a “dog concert” outside the house of the street car company’s director.

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Today -100: June 18, 1925: Of chemical warfare

The Geneva Protocol for the Control of International Commerce is signed by 18 countries, including the US. A protocol on chemical warfare is signed by 29 countries, banning the use of poison gases but only against other signers of the protocol and not internally. It will go into effect in 1928.

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Today -100: June 17, 1925: Of insecurity compacts

I haven’t mentioned that France is having a major colonial war in the Riff region of Morocco. Now I’ve mentioned it. Also, major upheavals in China.

Italy is refusing to adhere to a French-British security compact unless there’s a little sumthin’ sumthin’ in it for Italy. At the very least, it wants Britain to help protect the Brenner Pass on the Austro-Italian border. One element in the proposed Geneva Protocol which is especially pissing off Germany is the new French claim to a right to oppose by military means any union between Germany & Austria. Germany would also be required to negotiate arbitration deals with Poland and Czechoslovakia, which would allow France to send troops through Germany if those countries create trouble. The NYT’s source “close to Foreign Minister Stresemann” calls it an insecurity compact.

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Today -100: June 16, 1925: A leopard-skin what now?

Secretary of State Frank Kellogg has been scolding Mexico over its supposed mistreatment of American property and citizens and property. Also property. President Plutarco Elías Calles called him out over the condescending nature of his statement, excuse me, “insult,” so Kellogg is preparing an insulting riposte.

Prince Edward, still in Swaziland, gets gifts, including a leopard-skin kilt. He suggests to Paramount Chief Sobhuza, who has been promoting education, that he focus a little less on book learning and a little more on learning from European farmers.

Lord Cromer, the English theatrical censor (the Lord Chamberlain), bans the performance of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, but only in English. It’s not clear why, and indeed it has been staged in London before, in English. So it has now been performed at the New Oxford Theatre in London in Italian. It’s not clear how many in the audience actually know Italian.

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Today -100: June 15, 1925: I think he’s out-ranked

The Prince of Wales visits Swaziland (Eswatini) and meets the official rainmaker, who is the Supreme Chief’s mother. Can Edward even make rain? The people of Basutoland seemed to think so.

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Today -100: June 14, 1925: Of Gennas and Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressives

In Chicago, tit-for-tat violence between the Genna Gang and the North Side Gang takes out Michele “Mike the Devil” Genna, leader of the Genna Gang. A shoot-out between the two gangs is followed by one with the cops, two of whom are killed, Genna receiving a fatal bullet in the leg. Time is running out on the Genna brothers as a force in gangland, and I think you can guess who the beneficiary of that will be (hint: he has a scar on his face).

A Brooklyn judge refuses to approve the incorporation of the Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressive Society, because “the name is un-American” and the organizers don’t even seem to be from Hwerchnedneprowsker. Which, as far as I can tell, isn’t an actual place, so the Hwerchnedneprowsker Progressive Society remains a mystery.

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Today -100: June 13, 1925: Scopes in the big citiy

John Scopes, in New York City to meet with his attorneys, has been flooded with offers to write for syndicates and appear in films, $170,000 of offers in total. He has refused them all. When he goes to the Follies, not accepting a free ticket although shocked that it cost $7.50 – scalper’s rates, I think – he refuses to let his friend inform Will Rogers that he’s in the audience.

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Today -100: June 12, 1925: Murder in the sky!

Another aviation novelty: A diamond merchant flying from Vienna to Budapest transporting diamonds is murdered by his secretary and the pilot. Chloroformed and thrown overboard. The secretary then kills the pilot and escapes to Bulgaria, never to be found. Anyway, this is the first murder on an aeroplane.

D.C.’s last 3 fire horses, all with more than a decade of service, will retire. When Washingtonians heard they might be transferred to the Street Cleaning Dept, they raised $100 to retire them to the farm of the Home for Feeble and Infirm. Rude.

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Today -100: June 11, 1925: Take me out to the oooooop’ra, Take me out with the crooooowd

Coming later in the month: a production of Verdi’s Aida in Yankee Stadium, with horses and camels and elephants and hundreds of performers and starring Marie Rappold. Prices will range from $1 all the way up to $1.50.

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Today -100: June 10, 1925: Of stigmata of blockhead, cheese, and flags

Bainbridge Colby volunteers to join John Scopes’s legal team (for free). It won’t happen for whatever reason, like H.G. Wells appearing as a witness for the defense, but wouldn’t it have been fun to have two of Woodrow Wilson’s secretaries of state arrayed against each other? Come to think of it, the ACLU would really love to bring in another former secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, which won’t happen either.

To the criticism that Clarence Darrow shouldn’t be fronting this case because he’s an atheist, Darrow says he’s actually an agnostic. 

George Bernard Shaw weighs in on William Jennings Bryan’s fundamentalism: “It is a part of a stigmata of blockhead.” He adds, “What he calls fundamentalism I call infantilism.”

Headline of the Day -100:

I just assumed this is what the French Sénat discusses all the time. Sorry, but the following admittedly weak joke is kind of obligatory: If it’s not made in the Roquefort region of France, it has to be called sparkling fromage.

The German Reichstag rejects a motion to restore the flag’s colors to monarchist black, white & red.

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Today -100: June 9, 1925: Every idea is an incitement

Benjamin Gitlow, a former one-term Socialist member of the NY State Assembly and the Workers Party of America’s candidate for vice president in 1924 who was convicted of “criminal anarchy” under New York’s anti-anarchism law in 1920 for his role as business manager of The Revolutionary Age and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison, loses his appeal in the US Supreme Court. Justice Edward Sanford says the 1919 manifesto Gitlow published was a “direct incitement” rather than an “expression of philosophical abstraction.” He says states have the right to stamp down on ideas because a “single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smoldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration.” Holmes, dissenting along with Brandeis, says the “clear and present danger” standard was not met and disagrees that the manifesto constituted incitement, writing “Every idea is an incitement.”

Free-speech wise, Gitlow v. New York wasn’t a total loss. In fact, it expanded the 14th Amendment’s due process clause to the states, in this case due process relating to 1st Amendment free speech rights.

On July 1st, Japan will hold a National Humiliation Day to protest America’s racist immigration laws.

Headline of the Day -100:

Philip Bonifant, 40, who had cancer and an interesting idea of fun.

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Today -100: June 8, 1925: Fez-less

Turkish men now wear hats! A judge evidently found a loophole in the Koran. Straw hats are appearing in Turkey for the first time.

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Today -100: June 7, 1925: Of measles and sabbaths

Dicky Loeb of Leopold ‘n fame is pronounced insane in Joliet Prison following a bout of the measles.

Texas Gov. “Ma” Ferguson postpones the executions of two black brothers for 5 days so they won’t take place on a Sunday. A lynch mob who tried to kill them was thwarted, but the article does not say on what day of the week that occurred.

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Today -100: June 6, 1925: Deep Teutonic gloom is the worst kind of gloom

The Allies send a note to Germany listing steps they demand it take to rectify violations of the military provisions of the Versailles Treaty, including abolishing the general staff and reorganizing of the army, ending military training in private clubs and patriotic societies, ending military and gas warfare training, reducing the size of the national police, dismantling some factories and machinery in factories, withdrawing 8,000 steel helmets worn by cops, reducing the numbers of uniforms and gas masks and saddles and army officers beyond the requirements of the small German army as limited by the Treaty. To prevent the creation of an easily expandable core army, the training of reserve officers should be banned, only 12-year enlistments allowed, and soldiers must hop on one leg at all times. The Allies will continue occupying Cologne until Germany complies. Germany says the Treaty does not give the Allies the right to tell Germany how to run its army and that the demand for destruction of factories is aimed at German economic competition, for example in cheap automobiles. The Allied note “arouses only disapproval and anger, and deep Teutonic gloom.”

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Today -100: June 5, 1925: Of astronomers and royal beds

For some reason, there’s an obit of French astronomer and weirdo Camille Flammarion on the NYT’s front page, with a picture and everything.

Headline of the Day -100: 

Germany will open the former kaiser’s former rooms at the Berlin Imperial Palace(Königliches Schloss) to the general public.

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Today -100: June 4, 1925: Of new barbarians and bosh

Columbia Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler, addressing commencement exercises, denounces the “New Barbarians” who are trying to create a “sort of spineless corporate opinion which, operating by prohibitions and compulsions, aims to reduce all individuality, whether of mind or of character, to a gelatinous and wobbling mass.” He accuses Tennessee of “violently affronting the popular intelligence and [making] it impossible for a scholar to be a teacher in that state without becoming at the same time a law-breaker.” That’s a reference to the anti-evolution law, of course. He also deprecates Indiana, because, er, I’m not sure.

Anyway, there was a time when the Columbia administration was against spinelessness.

Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay, one of Butler’s New Barbarians, says evolution is “all bosh” and the Scopes trial won’t last more than 30 minutes.

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Today -100: June 3, 1925: Not everyone’s cut out to be an actor

Coolidge scotches plans to have actor Ramon Navarro filmed at the Annapolis commencement receiving a dummy diploma from Coolidge for a scene in “The Midshipman.” Surprisingly, Navy Sec. Curtis Wilbur approved the idea before Coolidge rejected it (and he’ll take Coolidge’s place in the scene).

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Today -100: June 2, 1925: The child is not the mere creature of the State

Thomas R. Marshall, aka Whatsisname, vice president under Woodrow Wilson and governor of Indiana before that, dies at 71 in the Willard Hotel, while reading the Bible. His Famous Quote, and the only thing he is remembered for: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

Deciding the case Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Supreme Court unanimously overturns Oregon’s Ku Klux Klan-backed law requiring children (as of 1926) to attend public schools, a law aimed at putting Catholic parochial schools out of business, which the Court says would be depriving them of their property without due process. Justice James McReynolds writes, “The child is not the mere creature of the State,” saying parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. This case marks the beginning of the extension of the 14th Amendment to the states. The NYT editorial page thinks this decision bodes ill for Tennessee’s anti-evolution law when it reaches the Supreme Court (Spoiler Alert: it won’t reach the Supreme Court).

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Today -100: June 1, 1925: Of mayors and reading without comment

NYC Mayor John Hylan has put a little too much emphasis on the 5¢ transit fare as the basis of his reelection campaign. His Board of Transportation has scuppered that by reporting that the new subway system requires at least an 8¢ fare unless property taxes are increased, a lot, so his chances of a third term do not look good. Tammany Hall is looking around for a replacement candidate. The R’s very much don’t have a candidate.

The ACLU plans to challenge a Delaware law fining any teacher who fails to do compulsory Bible reading “without comment.”

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