Today -100: July 10, 1925: Dayton decorates

The head of Coolidge’s Secret Service detail valiantly alerts him to the presence of an open elevator shaft at Fort Andrews by falling into it himself, sustaining minor injuries, allowing Coolidge to leap back instead of also falling into it. Fort Andrews is a bit of a mess, which is why Coolidge wanted to inspect it.

In Dayton, Tennessee, they’re cleaning up the courthouse, putting a big ol’ “Read your Bible” sign on it, and putting up bandstands for the Circus Trial of the Century. Judge Raulston has announced that due to the heat he will allow men to take off their coats. In the town, if one is tired of listening to many assembled religious fanatics orate and longs for the silence of the cinema, one can see “The She Devil,” which is presumably the 1918 Theda Bara film; if it isn’t already clear, Dayton is a little behind the times.

A NYT op-ed denies that William Jennings Bryan is using this trial as a springboard for yet another presidential run. “All he asks is that the world recognize him as the greatest moral statesman of his time. And if the world doesn’t do it, he will talk it blue in the face.”

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Today -100: July 9, 1925: William Jennings Bryan likes potatoes

William Jennings Bryan says if he loses the Monkey Trial, he will campaign for a constitutional amendment to ban the teaching of evolution. Evidently he’s been working on his closing speech for two months and, the NYT predicts, “It will undoubtedly be his greatest oratorical effort since his famous ‘Cross of Gold’ speech”. And boy will Bryan be pissed off when he isn’t allowed to give that closing speech.

Dayton, Tenn. is a small town. So just as John Scopes’s father is in a drugstore explaining that he dislikes Bryan because Bryan is too well-read to believe the shit he’s spouting, why there the Commoner is in the next aisle. John then politely introduces Bryan to his father and they shake hands.

Scopes expresses astonishment at Bryan’s nutritional ignorance: Bryan claims to be on a diet and to have has given up white bread because of the starch but chows down on potatoes.

Former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby was supposed to be one of Scopes’s lawyers, but the overturning of Home Rule in New York City, whose attorney he is, will keep him too busy to come to Tennessee.

John Hylan says he’ll run for a third term as mayor of New York City even if Tammany Hall doesn’t nominate him, so presumably running as an independent.

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Today -100: July 8, 1925: A duel to the death

William Jennings Bryan arrives in Dayton, Tennessee. He says “The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death. ... the two cannot stand together.”

The Washington D.C. commissioner of public buildings and parks, who issued the permit for the big Ku Klux Klan parade next month, refuses one for an anti-Klan meeting because it would be “political.”

The English Lord Chamberlain bans Ernest Vajda’s play “The Harem,” which recently finished a 183-performance run on Broadway, because “the plot is objectionable, the dialogue nasty, and the whole atmosphere salacious.” Sounds cool.

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Today -100: July 7, 1925: Of rum-runners, home rule, skyscrapers, and excessive laws

Pres. Coolidge, annoyed at watching rum-running ships visible from his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts, orders the Coast Guard to put a stop to it. The rum-runners’ cache was stored in the very next cottage. The Swampscott police chief was recently arrested under the Volstead Act.

The appellate division of the NY Supreme Court rules that the change in the state Constitution granting home rule to NYC was not legally adopted, the 1920 and 1922 Legislatures having passed different versions of the constitutional amendment. So a bunch of laws passed under home rule are null and void, including pay raises, the city running buses and setting routes, police licensing of taxi cabs, etc.

House of Representatives Chaplain James Montgomery says there are too many laws, which just confuses the average citizen. What we really need in terms of laws is the suppression of seditious publications, heathen churches, and undesirable immigration.

The Tribune Tower opens in Chicago. I do love a skyscraper with buttresses.

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Today -100: July 6, 1925: Princey goes bang bang

In Rhodesia, Edward, Prince of Wales shoots the largest blue wildebeest ever shot there, because he’s a dick.

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Today -100: July 5, 1925: Of birthday harmonicae

Pres. Coolidge is visited in his “Summer White House” in Swampscott, Massachusetts by a local boy on his 13th birthday and Coolidge’s 53rd (yes, the 4th of July, the only president born on that date, if you’re looking for a bit of trivia with which to delight your friends and confound your enemies). He is turned away, but his note and a gift of chocolates are sent in and Cal sends a car to bring him back to White Court, where they give him some of the president’s birthday cake (made by the former pastry chef of King Albert) and a harmonica.

At a Garibaldi fête in NYC, anti-Fascist red shirts and Fascist black shirts have a little brawl after the Fascisti attack an actual 82-year-old veteran of the Garibaldi movement as he walks to the offices of the radical newspaper Martello on East Fourteen Street, which takes him past Fascist hq; the two buildings are so close to each other I’m surprised this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time.

July the Fourth was Defense Day. 8 million Americans either take part in a little parade or enroll themselves for military service in the event of a national emergency. Gen. Pershing and VP Dawes have a phone conversation which is broadcast over the radio.  One person not so ready for a national emergency: Secretary of War John Weeks, who hasn’t exactly announced that he’s resigning due to ill health, but has sold his D.C. home.

Some interesting info about the film biz in the Daily Mail (London) from an English owner of 24 cinemas in France, who says that after trying to fill up a weekly program of 90 minutes (the normal length in Britain is 150 minutes), he runs out of French films, few of which are made because the French market is so small (1,500 cinemas, 1/10th the number of the US) and French films just don’t sell in the US, which doesn’t like them any more than the French like American films, but since he needs to fill that 90 minutes the French audiences can watch American films and lump it (British audiences, on the other hand, love American films).

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Today -100: July 4, 1925: Of eccentric music and safety first

John Scopes’s lawyers, or at least Clarence Darrow, plan to get his trial transferred to federal court in Chattanooga or Knoxville, considering that the circus atmosphere in Dayton would be a problem and that the constitutionality of the anti-evolution law needs to be adjudicated pronto, before other states pass their own versions.

The Dayton school superintendent has evidently asked the evangelist Billy Sunday to assist the prosecution. AP reached Sunday’s wife, who says he won’t do it.

A man dies of blood poisoning in Niagara Falls after a “Safety First” sign falls on him.

Headline of the Day -100:

59.

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Today -100: July 3, 1925: But what about gorilla gods?

Black groups protest to Pres. Coolidge over the march in D.C. the Ku Klux Klan plans for August 8th, suggesting it might lead to a race riot. Catholic and Jewish groups also object.

Alfred W. McCann, author of the error-filled anti-evolution book God — or Gorilla? (1922), declines William Jennings Bryan’s invitation to testify at the Scopes trial  because he believes in free speech.

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Today -100: July 2, 1925: Of Scopeses, charters, red archduchesses, and deposed archbishops

Lela Scopes, 28, sister of John Scopes is fired/not hired as a teacher in Paducah, Kentucky (she’d taken some time off to take college classes) after refuses a demand to denounce evolution, in case it affects her teaching of math, I guess. She’ll be offered a job in Winnetka, where she’ll teach for 30 years.

The Kansas Charter Board denies the Ku Klux Klan a charter, saying it lied in its application when it said the Klan does benevolent and charitable work.

Former archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria, granddaughter of penultimate Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph and daughter of Crown Prince Rudolf of Mayerling suicide pact fame (when she was 5), is “engaged” (the headline says “wed”) to Social Democratic deputy Leopold Petznek, despite still being married to, though legally separated from former Prince Otto Windischgrätz, whose actress mistress Elisabeth shot to death back in the day because the Habsburgs were just like that. Otto didn’t even want to marry her, but she got the hots for him and had Granddad-Emperor order him to drop the countess he was engaged to and marry Erzsi instead, which he did in 1902. She won’t actually be able to divorce Otto and marry Petznek, who will spend some time in Dachau, until 1948. Honestly, there’s so many more salacious details that I don’t have room for. It shocks me that there’s never been a biopic and the only biography of her hasn’t been translated into English.

NYPD cops (from the Bomb Squad for some reason) force entry into Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas after the NY Supreme Court deposes the archbishop, Platon Rozhdestvensky, in favor of Archbishop Adam Phillipovsky, which wasn’t a power I knew the New York courts had.

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Today -100: July 1, 1925: Of widow-reps, replenished Jessicas, German aviation, and foreign anti-Semitism

Edith Nourse Rogers, widow of Rep. John Jacob Rogers (R-Mass.), who died in March, wins a special election to replace him, beating former governor Eugene Foss, who ran as a “Coolidge Democrat,” whatever that might mean. She wins 70% of the votes. She’s the 6th woman elected to Congress, the first from New England, and she’ll remain in office until her death in 1960 at 79.

2 employees of publishing company Boni & Liveright are indicted for publishing Replenishing Jessica, by bohemian Greenwich Village author Maxwell Bodenheim, who later wrote Naked on Roller Skates (1930). Evidently the book is “salacious.” We’ll see if anything comes of this, but I’m kind of intrigued by the book’s title.

The Council of Ambassadors impose new restrictions on German aviation. They allow themselves to ban any German aircraft that might possibly be converted for military use, restrict the size of zeppelins, and bar Germans from international airplane races. They are also demanding a list of all planes, motors, spare parts, and pilots in training. Germans correctly think this is all aimed at restricting competition from German commercial planes, which is not a legitimate part of the Versailles Treaty.

The Bulgarian minister of war orders garrison commanders to crush anti-Semitism, which he says is foreign to Bulgaria.

It is not.

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Today -100: June 30, 1925: Earthquake

6.something magnitude earthquakes destroy much of Santa Barbara, killing 13.

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Today -100: June 29, 1925: Of kids, rubber, and erroneous assumptions

The NYT announces the birth of a son to Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey, Charles Spencer Chaplin III, the 2nd of his 11 children by 3 wives (the first died shortly after birth). I’m guessing the reason III’s birthday is announced as having just happened instead of the real date, May 5, is to disguise how young Lita was when impregnated, i.e. below the age of legal consent. III acted a little under the screen name Charles Jr. in such classics as Sex Kittens Go to College (1960),

which also featured Harold Lloyd Jr and “The Kid” co-star Jackie Coogan. I have not had the pleasure.

Kinky Headline of the Day -100:

H. L. Mencken, writing in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “Such obscenities as the forthcoming trial of the Tennessee evolutionist, if they serve no other purpose, at least call attention dramatically to the fact that enlightenment, among mankind, is very narrowly dispersed. It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone – that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous.”

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Today -100: June 28, 1925: Of sterilizations, seasonal indictments, and operas without pachyderms

Wisconsin Gov. John Blaine vetoes a bill allowing the Board of Control to sterilize the mentally ill before their release from state institutions. Not because it would be, you know, wrong, but because it would make families hesitate before institutionalizing family members and because patients’ knowledge of their impending sterilization might interfere with therapy. Also, people & families rich enough to afford private hospitals would escape sterilization.

Sen. Burton Wheeler accuses the RNC’s agent Blair Coan of trying to influence witnesses in the trumped-up case against Wheeler with women and liquor. Wheeler says “I am becoming so accustomed to being indicted by the Department of Justice that my only hope is that in the future they will indict me in the North in the Summertime and in California or Florida in the Winter.”

The massive staging of Aida at Yankee Stadium is less massive than planned, after it was realized that the stage might not be able to support elephants. There are camels, though. The audience consists of 20,000 people, meaning there are 20,000 people who want to see an opera.

The Polish government negotiated with the reps of the Jewish community to remove some laws, such as restrictions on licenses to Jews to trade and quotas for higher education, the army and civil service, and to allow 2 hours of trading on Sunday. In return, Jewish parliamentary deputies will end opposition to the government and tell foreigners that everything’s okay now.

The Italian Senate, acting as the High Court of Justice, exonerates Gen. Emilio De Bono for his role in the assassination of Deputy Giacomo Matteotti a year ago.

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Today -100: June 27, 1925: Of coups

Greek coup leader Gen. Theodoros Pangalos forces provisional president Adm. Pavlos Kountouriotis to name him prime minister and war minister.

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Today -100: June 26, 1925: Why indeed

After the London Times criticizes Mussolini’s Fascist regime, he writes a letter to the Times, as one does, demanding they “rectify” their silly claim that he has attacked basic constitutional liberties. He asserts that the opposition is a “small, dispossessed group” and the Fascists constitute the majority bigly. The Times asks, if that is so, “why is it necessary to gag the press, forbid free speech, forbid public meetings and arm the executive with arbitrary and irresponsible powers?”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos overthrows the Greek government. It’s described as a bloodless coup, if only because the Cabinet resigns after Pangalos threatens to bombard the Presidential Palace and the War Office. “The populace seems strangely unmoved by the event, and is evidently becoming accustomed to such coups, which have been increasingly frequent in recent years.”

The vice president of the United States Radium Corporation of Orange, NJ denies that it will close just because its female factory workers are getting radium poisoning making luminous radioactive paints for watches. Those workers are just on their summer vacations, he says.

Chaplin’s The Gold Rush premieres.

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Today -100: June 25, 1925: Of secessions and considerations

The Chicago City Council unanimously passes a proposal to ask the corporate counsel how the city can secede from Illinois. It says the Legislature is failing to follow the state constitution by not having reapportioned after the 1920 census, which would have given Cook County 5 more state senators and 15 more representatives.

The Ku Klux Klan asks Coolidge to review its August 8 parade in D.C., even though they know damned well he has no plans to be anywhere near the White House until September. A press statement which the Times doesn’t seem entirely convinced comes from the Klan suggests it deserves “the same consideration” from Coolidge as the (Catholic) Holy Name Society procession last year.

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Today -100: June 24, 1925: Of monkey glands, gun control, and ruining hospitals

As I briefly mentioned, China is a bit of a mess at the moment. Anyhoo, British and French marines in Canton fire machine guns at demonstrators.

Dr. Maurice Lebon of France wants large-scale breeding of monkeys, because monkeys are fun. No, wait, it’s because monkey glands can be used to “rejuvenate” humans.

A committee on gun sales appointed by NYC Mayor John Hylan endorses proposals before Congress to ban the sale of guns through the mails, to put a high sales tax on guns, and to ban toy pistols.

NYT Index Slip of the Tongue of the Day -100:

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Today -100: June 23, 1925: Ferocious totalitarian will is the worst kind of totalitarian will, which is the worst kind of will

At the Italian Fascist Party’s fourth party congress in Rome, Mussolini says the party’s new slogan is “All power to Fascism,” and the Constitution must be changed because it’s just a hindrance now. He demands the Senate not obstruct him, or else. The NYT fails to note the reference in his speech to “our ferocious totalitarian will,” which is his first use of the recently coined word “totalitario.” The word “totalitarian” will not arrive in the English language until next year. “Totalstaat” will arrive in German in 1927.

The lower house of the Italian Parliament has passed a bunch of laws giving the Duck powers to pass laws without its approval, purge the civil service, suppress newspapers, etc etc. 

In a radio address, Pres. Coolidge calls for yet more tax cuts. The tax burden has been reduced, he says, but “the reduction has not reached the point where taxes have ceased to be a burden.”  Pretty much by definition. “Wastrels, careless administrators of the Government’s substance, are out of place in the Federal service. They will not be tolerated.”

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Today -100: June 22, 1925: Which is the equivalent of some money

The ACLU announces a $10,000 Tennessee Evolution Case Fund.

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Today -100: June 21, 1925: More fun and games in the Prohibition biz

In Huntington, West Virginia, federal and state prohibition agents looking for a still mistake each other for moonshiners and shoot each other up. Two dead, another possibly mortally wounded.

Rum-running cars near Baltimore use a smokescreen to evade capture.

French censors ban the sole British exhibit at the Paris Modern Arts Exhibition, which consisted of members of the public throwing tennis balls at a black man’s head.

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