Today -100: November 4, 1924: Of dissension, radio, and extra naps

The state chair of the Democratic Party in Kansas says 2 party campaigners, including the president of the League of Young Democrats, were suspended by the Ku Klux Klan because of their work for the Dems. Grand Dragon Charles McBrayer (McBrayer! I know!) says they were actually suspended for “creating dissension among klansmen.”

Coolidge and Davis both give boring talks carried by a bunch of radio stations (26 for Coolidge, 11 for Davis).

Headline of the Day -100:  

“Takes extra nap” may be the most Coolidge thing ever. Or the most Biden thing.

Election day! Thus ending the 4th presidential race I’ve covered in this series! Results tomorrow.

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Today -100: November 3, 1924: Suuuuure they’ll win

Headline of the Day -100:  

Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, son of the German “crown prince” and grandson of former kaiser Wilhelm II, is part of a brawl between members of Stahlhelm, the monarchist veterans’ militia thing, and supporters of the Weimar Republic in Potsdam, although he and his fellow thugs flee after losing the struggle. Willy can, presumably, be a member of a veterans’ group even though he’s just 18 because his grandfather made him an army lieutenant at 10.

In Loup City, Nebraska, one Albert Duster is arrested for attempting to make a political, presumably election, speech in Polish, in violation of a wartime law against foreign languages.

Ohio KKK Grand Dragon Clyde Osborne blames the anti-kluxer violence in Niles on a “few hundred infuriated outsiders, largely of foreign birth” and “confessed enemies of the Republic, with the hidden forces of Sovietism and anarchy, which acknowledge no God. Now is the time for us to find out whether we are to have a free America or a country governed by mobs opposed to peaceful assemblage of law-abiding citizens.” Dude, we’re still trying to find that one out.

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Today -100: November 2, 1924: Of klarades, minority rule, creatures of foreign powers, and persuasion

The Klan parade in Niles, Ohio doesn’t come off after all. The anti-Klannies search cars, trolleys etc for people with kluxer regalia and/or weapons. The article’s unclear on who started the shooting. No one’s dead yet, but 3 are alleged to be dying. The National Guard is sent in. It bans the procession and any public assemblages and it closes the pool halls because of that whole “rhymes with P” thing.

This time it’s Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone claiming that a deadlock in the Electoral College would (somehow) lead to Davis’s running mate Charles Bryan being made president. He says such “minority control of government in a democratic country means chaos. I know of no attempt at such control comparable with this one, unless it be the minority rule of the Soviet government in distracted Russia.”

Éamon de Valera is sentenced by a Belfast court which he calls “the creature of a foreign power” to one month for entering Northern Ireland. I’m not sure from where the British home secretary’s power to ban people derives.

Headline of the Day -100:  

A little obscure here, but Fightin’ Bob says he used his senatorial franking privileges for a friend without reading what was being sent out. He is also accused of saying that the Great War was caused by “international financiers,” and we all know what that means.

The NYT says it’s been a boring presidential campaign because neither of the main parties is running a man people love to hate. So it’s been a campaign of persuasion. Boring, boring persuasion.

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Today -100: November 1, 1924: Of radio, golden streams, and non-denunciations

John W. Davis and Coolidge will both address the nation on a 23-station radio “chain” Monday, Coolidge following Davis.

Davis complains about the huge Republican slush fund (the RNC raised $3,742,962, which is the equivalent of some money, compared to the Democrats’ $552,368), but says the people will vote for a return to honest government even as R’s “pour a golden stream in every doubtful State.” So I guess Republicans liked golden showers well before Trump.

Sorry.

Not sorry.

Sen. George Wharton Pepper of Pennsylvania says if Coolidge denounced the Ku Klux Klan, he’d be breaking the law, somehow.

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Today -100: October 31, 1924: My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement

British elections: the Tories win a super-strong majority of 209, taking parliamentary seats mostly from the Liberals, who lose 3/4 of their seats; that’s them done. Party leader H.H. Asquith loses his Paisley seat to Labourite Edward Mitchell; he says he’ll stand again, but that’s him done as a member of Parliament. Labour loses 40 of its 191 seats, despite increasing its share of the popular vote.

Soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (who does not lose his seat) sez: “My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement. Let ‘em all come.”

There will be 4 women MPs in the new Parliament, down from 8: Lady Nancy Astor, Katharine the Duchess of Atholl (who used to be an anti-suffragist and honestly still may be), Mabel Philipson, and a newcomer, Ellen Wilkinson.

Winston Churchill returns to Parliament, this time as a “Constitutionalist.”

Not a good election for sons of party leaders, the sons of Baldwin and MacDonald failing to get elected to Parliament and Lloyd George’s son Gwilyn losing his seat.

The test case on whether tax return information can be made public is tried in Cleveland, the judge ruling that it can. But many local collectors are still refusing to follow the law.

In a little Roosevelt-on-Roosevelt action, Franklin Delano R. (who used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) says Theodore R. Jr. (who also used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) sucked at the job and Navy morale has plummeted, with officers resigning, ships sinking, men deserting, etc. He says when TR Jr. testified to the Senate Teapot Dome Committee, he displayed “the most charming and complete ignorance about his job that any government official has ever displayed.” Charming and complete ignorance is the best kind of ignorance, er, probably.

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Today -100: October 30, 1924: Oh, c’mon, a mouse president would be AWESOME

Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair orders local tax collectors to open income tax payment records to the public, but some of them are refusing.

Author Frances Hodgson Burnett dies at 74. She wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden. Er, those are three different books. She sued the producers of a play based on Little Lord F. that ran in England, establishing for the first time authors’ rights to control adaptations of their works, something Dickens tried repeatedly to do.

An explosion hits the home of Mayor H.L. Kistler of Niles, Ohio (the birthplace of William McKinley). Kistler had issued a permit for a Ku Klux Klan march for November 1st but denied one for the anti-Klan Knights of the Flaming Circle at the same time, because the Klan had firsties. Kistler & family are ok.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt says we need a man president, not a mouse president.

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Today -100: October 29, 1924: If you want to leave things as they are you must get people excited about something else

France recognizes the Soviet Union. Russian emigrés in France protest and say that if they should ever take power in Russia, they won’t recognize any agreements between France and the USSR.

The Georgia Ku Klux Klan is telling kluxers not to vote for Davis for president. The Klan paper Searchlight is claiming Davis recently called in Indianapolis for complete equality, which obviously means intermarriage. The Democrats reply that Davis obviously meant legal equality, not social equality, that would just be silly.

Attorney Gen. Harlan Stone says yeah, Congress made income tax returns public records but it’s still illegal to publish that information, and he has no idea what Congress had in mind there, so there’ll have to be a test case to punt the issue to the courts. In which any newspaper they prosecuted would presumably say, if the Justice Dept doesn’t know what’s illegal why should we? Stone says anyone who publishes returns before the test case does so at their peril.

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says he’s heard that the Zinoviev Letter was discussed in “a certain club in London” 4 days before the Foreign Office even heard of it, and that the clubsmen “were in a state of great jubilation ‘that the thing would come off.’” MacD still won’t say it’s definitely a forgery but he has “suspicions.” Other cabinet members, such as Colonial Sec. J.H. Thomas, are quite clear that it’s “a mean and contemptible fraud.” That’s the worst kind of fraud. The War Secretary says it will be proven a fake in a day or two. The general election is today.

George Bernard Shaw, in a speech in Luton – but for who or what? – points out the cleverness of the old governing class in always “preventing an English election from being fought on an English question” as opposed to an Irish or, in this case, Russian one. “If you want to leave things as they are you must get people excited about something else.”

The Navy secretary lifts the ban on soda pop on Navy ships.

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Today -100: October 28, 1924: Might have originated anywhere

British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald says that the Foreign Office thinks the Zinoviev Letter is real so he personally thinks it’s real but he hasn’t seen the evidence yet (he’s out in the country election-campaigning; this is a speech in Cardiff) and “so far as I know, the letter might have originated anywhere.” However, “it is a most suspicious circumstance that a certain newspaper [the Daily Mail, of course, which he later describes as “a certain London newspaper notorious for its false news,” which, you know, fair] and the headquarters of the Conservative Association seem to have had copies of it at the same time as the Foreign Office, and if that is true how can I, a simple-minded, honest person who puts two and two together, avoid the suspicion – I will not say the conclusion – that the whole thing is a political plot?” He says the Foreign Office’s letter of protest to Russia was a draft that had been prepared so it could be sent immediately if the letter were proven authentic, and it wasn’t supposed to have been sent when it was sent.

After his arrest at Newry for entering Northern Ireland, Éamon de Valera was put over the border and told not to come back. He came back, and is arrested at Derry/Londonderry.

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Today -100: October 27, 1924: Of speaking fees and forgeries

Supposedly Coolidge, last year when he was vice president, demanded $250 plus expenses to address a memorial meeting for veterans. The White House hasn’t denied the story, because it’s true. This is the man who opposes the Bonus because “patriotism can neither be bought not sold.”

Some Cabinet officers in Britain’s Labour government are saying the Zinoviev Letter is a forgery, while others are saying they just don’t know. PM Ramsay MacDonald hasn’t offered an opinion.

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Today -100: October 26, 1924: Of impudent forgeries

A Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) meeting denounces the Zinoviev Letter as an “impudent forgery,” which is the worst kind of forgery. They point out that the Z-Man supposedly signed using a job title he does not possess.

Tsao Kun resigns as president of China, a rather large country I’m mostly ignoring here.

Thomas Edison paid $9,787.83 in income tax.

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Today -100: October 25, 1924: Of crude forgeries, taxes, and exclusions

Headline of the Day -100: 

This is the “Zinoviev Letter” (full text), which is purported to be a directive from Grigori Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), instructing it to stir up shit to put pressure on the government to ratify the trade agreement with Russia. Britain complains to Moscow. The British Secret Service (SIS) has strategically leaked the Letter to the Conservative Party, which in turn has leaked it to the Daily Mail 4 days before the general election. The Russian chargé d’affaires in London calls it a “crude forgery” and says even if it’s real Russia can hardly be held responsible for the actions of the Communist International. The Letter is indeed a forgery. It’s not very different from the sort of exhortations the Comintern routinely sends out, but the start of negotiations in April was accompanied by a moratorium on stirring shit up in Britain. Also, Zinoviev wasn’t in Moscow when he supposedly sent this letter. The CPGB claims never to have received the letter, and there is no evidence now, much less 1924, that it did. The probable source of the Letter is Vladimir Orlov, a tsarist exile and supplier of fake documents to the SIS and others from his forgery factory in Riga.

The British protest was sent by the Foreign Office “in the absence of the Secretary of State,” who happens to also be Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. He was off campaigning and did not authorize it. Deep State working against Labour? Simple mistake? The FO released the protest to the press less than 3 hours after handing it to the Russian embassy and without telling MacDonald.

The IRS makes tax payments open to public inspection, though local offices are obstructing release of the information to a greater or lesser degree. The Justice Dept confuses the situation further by asserting that publication of such information by newspapers is a crime. Nevertheless, the NYT publishes the tax paid by rich New Yorkers (plus Chicagohoovians, Angelinos, etc), noting that city and state government officials’ income is exempt from federal taxes, so their names won’t appear. Every businessman, banker etc is checking the lists already published to see if their name and tax payments have been released. Coolidge paid $6,643, John W. Davis over $84,000.

Corneliu Codreanu, head of Romania’s fascist Iron Guard, assassinates Constantin Manciu, the Jassy police chief. The story doesn’t seem to make it into the NYT, whose sole story from Romania in this period informs us that the country is adopting the metric system (spoiler alert). Codreanu will be acquitted after arguing that he shot Manciu – in the back – in self defense.

Northern Ireland arrests Éamon de Valera for... coming to Northern Ireland. In violation of an exclusion order. Specifically to Newry, where he came to speak to “my constituents” (he was elected to the UK Parliament in County Down in 1921 but didn’t take his seat) in favor of a Republican candidate.

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Today -100: October 24, 1924: Wherein is revealed what American standard of living cannot be maintained without

Pres. Coolidge gives an address “coast to coast” carried by 23 radio stations. He strongly opposes free trade: “American industry cannot exist, American wages cannot be paid, American standard of living cannot be maintained without a protective tariff.” He has nothing good to say about government spending, arguing that it needs to be slashed and taxes cut, especially for the rich: he claims that more tax can be collected from the rich at a moderate tax rate than at a high one. “I will call an agricultural conference” is where I personally checked out of reading this soporific speech.

The NYT tut tuts the rowdyism at British election meetings.

Tory leader Stanley Baldwin calls on women voters to “give themselves heart and soul to a policy of encouraging mutual trade within the empire by means of imperial preference.”

Italy: Gen. Emilio De Bono resigns as head of the Blackshirt militia. He has been accused, rightly, of using his day job as chief of police to cover up the Giacomo Matteotti assassination. Mussolini accepts what he calls De Bono’s “spontaneous” resignation and says he’ll appoint him governor of Somaliland (he won’t, but after De Bono is acquitted in a trial for the Matteotti thing, he’ll be made governor of Libya, which will not go well for Libyans).

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Today -100: October 23, 1924: Of generals and bungholes

Gen. Erich Ludendorff, who was acquitted earlier this year for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch, will run for the Reichstag, I assume representing Bavaria. Some of his admirers wanted him not to run because he belongs to the nation, not to any party (in this case a coalition party of far-right nationalists including Nazis who can’t run under the Nazi name) (which I’d like to point again isn’t a name the Nazis used).

Headline of the Day -100:  

I absolutely do not want to know what this means.

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Today -100: October 22, 1924: Hurrah, German elections are always a good time

Germany’s Reichstag elections will be held on December 7th. Prussia and Bavaria will tag along with their own state elections, which they didn’t have to do but figured what the hell. Other states may follow, and there may be municipal and county elections in various locales.

The Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP) issues its election program, calling for the purging of pacifism and the November (1918) spirit, the restoration of the monarchy and repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Dawes Plan.

Germany confiscates a French balloon competing in a race which landed in Germany. This after the ZR-3 zeppelin was permitted to fly over France on the way to the US, so this seizure, while allowed under the regs, looks a bit rude.

The Italian Communists suggest that all opposition deputies, who are still boycotting Parliament over the Matteotti assassination, form a rump anti-Fascist parliament. There is no chance in hell other parties will join them.

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Today -100: October 21, 1924: Of headless chickens

German Chancellor Wilhelm Marx having failed to bring Socialists and Nationalists into the government, the Reichstag will be dissolved and new elections held.

In the 3 years since the Volstead Act was passed, there have been 177,000 arrests just at the federal level, with prison sentences adding up to 7,000 years.

W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP calls on blacks to vote for Robert La Follette and drop the Republicans.

Bobby Franks’s father Jacob establishes a trust fund to continue the fight against any effort to release Leopold n’ Loeb from prison, even after his own death (which will be in 1928).

Éamon de Valera has said he’ll go to Northern Ireland to campaign for republican candidates in the UK general election. NI says he’ll be arrested if he tries it.

Headline of the Day -100:  

That’s Henry MacCracken, president of Vassar.

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Today -100: October 20, 1924: Of slush, truancy, and matadors

In the absence of proper opinion polls, John W. Davis, like the Republicans, over-estimates the popularity of the Progressives, saying they’ll carry 6 to 8 states. He sees this as a revolt within the Republican Party, which will take votes only from it and result in Coolidge’s defeat.

The Republican slush fund is being used in Tennessee to pay the poll taxes of 25,000 or so Republican voters.

The Chicago superintendent of compulsory education says husbands of wives 16 years old or younger are legally responsible for their child-brides going to school and can be arrested for their truancy.

The “authorities” in Spain, whoever they might be, turn down a Señora Reverte who wants to be a matador. They say it’s dangerous and not fitting for a woman, although women can be picadors and banderillos (sic). (Update: This is María Salomé Rodríguez Tripiana, who fought as La Reverte and was actually born male, or so they claimed after the interior minister banned female matadors in 1908 as “an inappropriate spectacle and so contrary to culture and all delicate feelings” – you know, the delicate feelings of people who enjoy watching bulls stabbed.)

Trans matadors is not something I expected to be googling today.

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Today -100: October 19, 1924: Of electric coffee, assassins, and oases

Nominations close for the British general elections. 38 win their seats unopposed, including Tory leader Stanley Baldwin. The Liberals are contesting only 55% of the seats. 41 of the 1,405 candidates are women, of whom 12 are Tory, 6 Liberal and 22 Labour (Spoiler Alert: 4 will be elected).

NY Gov. Al Smith campaigns in Buffalo, where Mayor Francis Schwab (R), who was originally nominated by his friends as a practical joke – a brewer, he was under indictment at the time for possession of liquor – has been trying to make the names of Klan members public, fighting his police commissioner to do so. So the Klan is a big source of controversy in Buffalo, and Smith is here to help. He denounces Coolidge’s policy of silence.

The Klan holds a meeting in the fairgrounds outside Worcester, Massachusetts. As they leave, townies throw stones at their cars and beat up some of the kluxers.

Thomas Edison visits an electrical show, drinks “an electrically made cup of coffee,” and predicts that power will some day be transmitted by radio.

Heinrich Schulz (misidentified here as Foerster), one of the right-wing assassins of German former finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1921, was captured in Hungary early this year. Hungary then refused to extradite him to Germany but expels him from the country as an undesirable. He will join the Turkish army, he says. He won’t actually do that, but will go to Spanish Guinea to oversee a plantation, where he’ll get malaria. He’ll return to Germany after Hitler comes to power and join the SS. Captured at the end of the war and questioned at Nuremberg, he’ll be returned to Germany for trial for the assassination. He’ll be convicted for manslaughter and serve 2 years of a 12-year sentence, living as a free man until his death in 1979.

Two Italian planes bomb the Gialo oasis in Libya. This is seen, by the Italians anyway, as a particularly audacious mission, given that the planes had to fly 373 miles to and from Benghazi and a while ago a pilot fell out of his plane in Libya and was eaten by hyenas, as was the custom.

The Texas Supreme Court rules that women, in this case Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, are eligible to hold office.

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Today -100: October 18, 1924: Of monolinguals and table manners

Former ambassador John W. Davis admits at a meeting of Poles in Chicago that he only speaks English.

Headline of the Day -100:  

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Today -100: October 17, 1924: The woman idea is here to stay

“Ma” Ferguson, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, says of the nomination of Nellie Taylor Ross for governor of Wyoming in the special election there, “The woman idea is here to stay.”

Matilde Pérez Molla becomes Spain’s first woman mayor, of Cuatretondeta. She is appointed, not elected. The first elected mayor, in 1932, will be María Domínguez Remón in Gallur, who will be killed by Francoists early in the Civil War. They weren’t big on the woman idea.

The ZR-3 zeppelin is supposed to be deflated and the hydrogen with which it crossed the Atlantic replaced with helium, which is a lot safer, but the US doesn’t have enough helium to inflate both the ZR-3 and the Shenandoah, so they may not do that.

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Today -100: October 16, 1924: There is no good in shutting your eyes to the portent of the Third Party movement

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes continues to campaign for Coolidge (and Theodore Roosevelt Jr.) by focusing solely on Progressive candidate La Follette while ignoring Democratic candidate Davis. “The Third Party is a dangerous enemy to our form of government,” he says. He says Fightin’ Bob’s plan to give Congress a veto over Supreme Court decisions could lead to “any sort of dictatorship they please.”

Indiana Secretary of State Edward Jackson (R), who is running for governor, has been circulating photographs of Ku Klux Klan records to prove he is a member. As are almost all Republicans running for office in the state. Unclear why Jackson thought people needed reassurance on his klannishness.

The ZR-3 zeppelin completes its 5,000-mile trip from the factory in Germany that built it as part of war reparations to the US in 81 hours, circling New York City 5 times just above the skyscrapers and sailing high over Brooklyn (don’t we all) before landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In Toronto, Prince Edward falls off his horse, as was the custom.

The Wahabis capture Mecca. No “excesses” have been reported.

Headline of the Day -100:  

New York Giants pitcher Walter Huntzinger, not a large vomiting man, although I suppose he could be both.

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