Today -100: August 8, 1925: Of beebs, right arms, and lynchings

Rudyard Kipling joins a committee of inquiry into the future of British radio broadcasting after the British Broadcasting Company’s monopoly expires next year. Does that strike anyone else as incongruous? He’s only 59, but wireless just feels a bit futuristic for him. The article doesn’t say how many people are on the committee, but it includes just one (1) woman, Meriel Talbot, former director of the Women’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Jimmy Walker cuts the legs out from under NYC Mayor John Hylan’s main issue, saying he (Walker) has fought for the 5¢ fare for years and “would rather cut off his right arm” than increase it.

Former Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando resigns from the Chamber of Deputies, in protest at the Fascist tactics during the Palermo elections.

A mob of 1,000 people lynch a black man in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. The lynching could be seen from a train.

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Today -100: August 7, 1925: Slow news day

Mayor Lawrence Quigley of Chelsea, Massachusetts is arrested, along with 43 others, for conspiracy to violate Prohibition.

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Today -100: August 6, 1925: Of traffic peerages, walkers, and cities wicked and reckless of life

Tammany Hall decides to run State Sen. Jimmy Walker against John Hylan in the Dem. mayoral primary. Now if they can just keep him out of the speakeasies. Gov. Al Smith has been quiet on the intramural squabble thus far, although it’s no secret that he haaaaates Hylan.

A few days after the Grand Jury said it would question NYPD Commissioner Richard Enright on the “PD” signs he’s been handing out for display in the cars of a “traffic peerage” of prominent people who are not members of the PD, making them immune to traffic-law enforcement, the police, following Mayor Hylan’s order, ask for the signs to be returned.

A mere 60 years after Elizabeth Garrett became the first woman given a licence to practice medicine in Britain through a loophole that allowed her to join the Society of Apothecaries, the Royal College of Surgeons will admit women, with voting rights and everything.

Chicago Mayor William Dever asks Chicagohoovians to help dispel the “apparently general impression that our city is wicked and reckless of life.” For example, the newspapers reported that there have been 227 murders this year, when there were actually only 112, not counting all the times cops shot alleged criminals. I don’t think that’s as reassuring as he thinks it is.

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Today -100: August 5, 1925: They are waiting, and so am I

NYC Mayor John Hylan is urged by his biggest fan, Henry Fruhauf of the Hylan Five-Cent Fare Club, to remain in the mayoral race even if he loses the Democratic primary, since politicians can control the primary but not the general election, and yes I’m mostly reporting this for the name of that “club.” Hylan really has no other issue than the 5¢ thing (that said, as I write this, before the 2025 mayoral primaries, Zohran Mamdani is campaigning on making the buses free, just like the Staten Island ferry, but he does have other issues).

Ex-kaiser Wilhelm tells a Budapest newspaper, “The so-called democracy of today means death to the nation. It is an inadequate form of government, and the people within their hearts prefer the monarchy, or one-man rule. I trust in the character and fidelity of the German people. They are waiting, and so am I.”

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Today -100: August 4, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

Greece is threatening war against Bulgaria. Ahead of a scheduled mutual ethnic cleansing in October, Greeks in Bulgaria are being killed, Greece says, in order to force Greeks to flee so their property can be grabbed.

US marines end their 13-year occupation of Nicaragua, except for 4 who desert to stay with their Nicaraguan wives.

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Today -100: August 3, 1925: Of concentration camps and anniversaries

Those ethnic Germans deported from Poland are currently quartered in the decrepit Schneidemühl concentration camp. It was a World War I prisoner of war camp, but I was a bit startled to see “concentration camp,” a term I thought hadn’t yet migrated to German from English, where it was coined for the Boer War.

Coolidge has been president for two years.

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Today -100: August 2, 1925: The word “undesirable” was just sitting there

Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” is banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain, who calls it “abhorrent.”

Count Antonio Cippico, Italian Fascist senator and Italian delegate to the League of Nations, says Fascism is “remolding the national soul of the Italians by severe discipline.” He says Italy’s territory is “insufficient to support her people,” so it requires either new colonies (its “share” of Germany’s former colonies) or for its emigrants need to live in other countries as groups and without losing their Italian citizenship.

Spain has its first ever divorce, that of the Baron and Baroness de Valasco.

There are something like 100,000 refrigerators in homes in the US.

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Today -100: August 1, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings and occupations

The expulsion of Poles from Germany and Germans from Poland is happening. The Poles are mostly miners who lived in the Ruhr and have been sent to Silesia, which already has all miners it needs. The ethnic Germans are mostly farmers who lived in German Poland for generations and don’t speak German.

The French occupation of the Ruhr ends after 2½ years. German airplanes will again be allowed to fly over the Ruhr, and Ruhrihoovians will be allowed to own radios.

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Today -100: July 31, 1925: Putting industry on its feet

Intervention by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin may have postponed an imminent coal strike, with the 13% wage reductions the owners are trying to impose (or longer hours for the same wages, they’d be happy with that too) also being postponed, pending a 9-month government inquiry into coal industry efficiency and shit (the inquiry will side with the owners over wages and hours and seems to have been a delaying action so the owners could prepare for a fight). Baldwin, we are told, “labored so manfully that... he was forced to content himself with a hurried midday snack instead of a leisurely lunch”. Baldwin says (not quoted by the NYT), “All the workers in this country have got to take reductions in wages to help put industry on its feet.”

In Taizhou, Zhejiang province, China, the top general is asked to do a rain ceremony involving a kowtow to a frog. He says he’ll do it later at the temple, the crowd refuses to leave until he does it, a riot ensues in which the poor frog is trampled, and soldiers fire into the crowd, killing 8.

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Today -100: July 30, 1925: Of quacks and evolution

Sigmund Freud will head an international psychoanalytical foundation, aimed in part at stopping “the practice of psychoanalysis by quacks.” Insert your own joke here.

The lower house of the Georgia Legislature rejects a measure to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools.

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Today -100: July 29, 1925: Simple folk

Sub-Hed of the Day -100:

William Jennings Bryan’s body on display in Dayton, land of the simple folk.

The text of his undelivered closing speech from the Monkey Trial is released.

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Today -100: July 28, 1925: Of widows and dried-up friendly sources

Isabelle La Follette, widow of Fightin’ Bob, declines to stand for his vacant Senate seat. Fightin’ Bob Jr. probably will run.

The Italian Foreign Office asks the US ambassador to facilitate the expulsion from Italy of Chicago Tribune reporter George Seldes for writing bad things about Mussolini, including that he was involved in the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. This will be the second country to deport him, after Russia. The Trib protests that censorship of its correspondents will result in it having to get its Italian news from the opposition, “the friendly sources being all dried up.” 

According to his 1987 memoirs Witness to a Century, the train taking Seldes to France (involuntarily) was stopped at the border and a Blackshirt squad entered to beat him up/kill him. He found a compartment with some British admirals who confronted the Blackshirts and saved him.

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Today -100: July 27, 1925: Commoner as dirt

William Jennings Bryan, 65, dies in his sleep in Dayton, napping after church. He’s been making soooo many speeches since the end of the trial, in the hot Tennessee sun. In fact, he was scheduled to finally deliver the closing speech that he was precluded from giving during the trial. Bryan was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1896, 1900 and 1908, losing to McKinley twice and Taft once, his share of the popular vote declining with each election. He was secretary of state under Wilson and more recently promoted real estate in Florida.

Clarence Darrow expresses sorrow, saying he’d supported Bryan for president – twice.

H. L. Mencken, writing about William Jennings Bryan in The Baltimore Evening Sun: “His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up – to lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle as a comedy.”

German nationalists will put on Aryan plays, whatever that means, with Aryan actors.

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Today -100: July 26, 1925: Of ethnic cleansings, geniuses in the air, and... there are odors in New York?

Poland will force out the 15,000 ethnic Germans who voted for German citizenship in the plebiscite in Upper Silesia in 1921 (no secret ballot, I guess), with 20,000 more to come. Germany retaliates against Poles living in Germany who voted for Poland (10,000). Warsaw bans German-language plays. (Update: it’s not actually based on voting in the plebiscite; it’s Germans who retained their German nationality after the plebiscite).

Albert Einstein takes his first plane ride. 

Headline of the Day -100:

Rude.

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Today -100: July 25, 1925: Make good?

Count Antonio Cippico, an Italian Fascist senator and Italian delegate to the League of Nations, lectures at the Institute of Politics, defending the “cruel necessity” of war. I mean, a nation might need to do war to “remedy the defects of its geographical, political or economic situation in the world or to make good its own civilization as opposed to the inferior civilization of other people.”

William Jennings Bryan writes a letter to the NYT saying Clarence Darrow’s accusation that he is an ignoramus unfairly took advantage of the fact that he doesn’t know shit about shit.

The California Board of Education disappoints Fundamentalists by accepting biology textbooks that include the e-word.

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Today -100: July 24, 1925: Of dead PMs

Earlier this month, Russia executed Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, 75, the last prime minister before the February Revolution, for alleged monarchist counter-revolutionary activity.

Golitsyn will be “rehabilitated” in 2004.

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Today -100: July 23, 1925: This comedy cannot last longer

New York City Mayor John Hylan vehemently rejects the offer from fellow Democrats of a state Supreme Court seat in exchange for ending his re-election campaign, adding that he hasn’t actually received that offer from anyone with the power to get him on the court.

The appropriation bill for Washington D.C. includes a provision against paying the salary of any school superintendent who permits a teacher (who can’t be paid either) “who teaches disrespect for the Holy Bible,” which slipped through unnoticed. So Bureau of Internal Revenue employee Loren Wittner (not acting in his official capacity) files a petition under that provision because, you guessed it, evolution is being taught. One of the 11 counts of anti-Biblical teaching he cites (and it took me longer than I care to admit to realize this is a joke; I’m not sure whether the NYT has realized it) is that blood is required to keep human beings alive. Another is that rainbows are caused by natural reflection and refraction of light, instead of God reminding us of The Flood. Also, DC schools are teaching that the Earth isn’t flat and the law of gravity, which conflicts with the story of Elijah ascending to Heaven.

Italian anti-Fascist deputy Giovanni Amendola, who defined the concept of totalitarianism, was attacked by Blackshirts a few days ago, beaten with clubs. Fascist Party Secretary General Roberto Farinacci says he can’t “conscientiously deplore” the violence, saying “It is time anti-Fascists should know that this comedy cannot last longer. We cannot continue to tolerate provocations whereof we are the victims.” (Farinacci would later lose a hand fishing with a hand grenade, as you do. And he’ll be executed by partisans in 1945, which he probably conscientiously deplored.) Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia asks, if Fascismo is no longer supported by the majority of the Italian people, as Amendola has claimed, why did no one defend him from the attack? Anyway, although this article suggests he’s not too seriously injured, he will never recover and will die in April.

Race rioting in Pittsburgh, broken up by the police. The article doesn’t say how it started.

Will Hays is now telling motion picture companies what plays they can’t turn into movies, including Sidney Howard’s “They Knew What They Wanted,” which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize.

Headline of the Day -100:

William Jennings Bryan, who has opinions, says the best name for a girl is Mary and the best name for a boy is Paul.

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Today -100: July 22, 1925: He is our Exhibit A

The Scopes trial was supposed to resume today with a continuation of Clarence Darrow’s questioning of William Jennings Bryan, but Judge Raulston announces that it won’t and that Bryan’s testimony will be stricken from the record because it “can shed no light on any issues that will be pending before the higher courts.” Darrow admits that he’s not sure Bryan’s testimony would help the state Supreme Court “or any other human being,” but says he wasn’t done. Now Bryan won’t be able to get his heart’s desire to put Darrow on the stand to expose his “religious attitude” (or maybe Attorney General Tom Stewart vetoed the silly idea).

With that, Darrow says screw it and asks for a directed verdict of guilty. The jury duly convicts and Scopes is fined $100. Which he will never pay.

Bryan’s been working on his closing speech for 3 months, and now won’t be able to give it.

Outside the court, Bryan sends Darrow the questions he wanted to ask him on the stand, related to Jesus’s divinity, the immortality of the soul, etc. Darrow mostly responds with longer versions of “Dunno, I’m an agnostic, dude.” Bryan says the Scopes trial has proved that the Bible is true. Um, sure. He says the issue of whether the Bible is true “dwarfs all other issues now under consideration by the people of the United States and of the world.” Christians, he says, “are at last awakened to the insidious attacks which have been made, under cover of scientific hypothesis, upon the authority of the Bible by unbelievers of every grade and class. The attack upon the authority of the Bible is organized, deliberate and malignant, and had only to be uncovered to be understood.” Bryan calls Darrow “the finished product of evolution... he embodies all that is cruel, heartless and destructive in evolution. He is our Exhibit A.” 

Darrow, referring to Bryan’s statement as “rabies,” responds that Bryan is not a product of evolution, but a reversion to type.

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Today -100: July 21, 1925: What is the meaning of all this harangue?

At the Monkey Trial, Clarence Darrow surprises William Jennings Bryan by calling him to the stand as a witness for the defense as an alleged expert on Christianity and the Bible. Bryan being Bryan doesn’t object, but proves (partial transcript) unable to answer questions about where Cain’s wife came from (“I leave the agnostics to hunt for her”), the nature of Jonah’s whale, Adam’s rib, how old the Earth is, whether Chinese or Egyptian civilization is older than he thinks the Earth is, etc.  At one point Attorney General Tom Stewart tries to intercede, asking “What is the meaning of all this harangue?”, to which Darrow responds, “preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the educational system of the United States” (hey Linda McMahon, I think he’s talking about you). Bryan jumps up and yells, “To protect the word of God from the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.” He accuses Darrow of casting slurs on the Bible; Darrow says he’s just “showing up your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on Earth believes.”

Typical exchange: “Have you ever investigated to find out how long man has been on the earth?” “I have never found it necessary.”

Awesome exchange: “I do not think about things I don’t think about.” “Do you think about things you do think about?” “Well, sometimes.”

Bryan demonstrates that he is not only ignorant, even about the Bible, but profoundly uncurious.  But what will really damage his reputation among Fundamentalists is that he allows for non-literal readings, admitting that the 6 days in which God created shit were “Not six days of twenty-four hours” but could be millions of years.

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Today -100: July 20, 1925: These people are all right

John Scopes says the Fundamentalists also don’t like him because he smokes and (gasp) dances. He says the trial is defeating the purpose of the Butler Act by making people think about science and religion. “These people are all right. They’re intelligent, but hitherto uninformed.”

Former Vermont governor (1896-8) and possessor of The Most Vermont Governor Name Ever, Josiah Grout, dies at 84.

New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore Cotillo, head of the New York State branch of the Sons of Italy in America and son of the man who introduced spumoni to the US, accuses John (Giovanni) Di Silvestro of being a “tool of Mussolini” (Fact Check: Correct) and trying to subordinate the body to the Fascist Party in Italy (Fact Check: Correct). Not that Cotillo doesn’t love him some Duce too, he just thinks that Fascism shouldn’t be imported into the US and believes Italian immigrants in the US should assimilate. The Mussoliniists accuse Cotillo of being a Bolshevik, as is the custom. Di Silvestro will win this battle (which is also about who gets to steal the Sons’ pension fund), but the friendly dialogue over links with Italy will continue. For example, in 1933 a bomb will destroy Di Silvestro’s Philadelphia home, killing his wife and 4 of his children.

Failed coup attempt in Portugal.

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