Today -100: January 31, 1925: Of fraud, renegades, and bananas

Former director of the Veterans’ Bureau, Charles Forbes, the biggest crook in the Harding Administration, is convicted, along with contractor John Thompson, of defrauding the government in contracts for vets’ hospitals.

Coolidge supports the Congressional Republican decision not to allow supporters of La Follette in the 1924 election back into the caucus. Fiorello La Guardia is particularly defiant.

Otto Braun (Social Democrat) is back as Minister-President (prime minister) of Prussia after the (Catholic) Zentrum Party fails to come to a coalition agreement with the right-wing and fascist parties.

Honduras will ban black immigrants. Banana companies have been using them to undercut wages. It doesn’t say where they’re importing them from.

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Today -100: January 30, 1925: But mostly the assassination thing

New York City Comptroller/Controller Charles L. Craig has been feuding with mayors for 8 years because he is an obnoxious petty little bitch (here’s his 1935 obituary). Anyway, at a Sinking Fund Commission meeting, he tries to have NY Mayor John Hylan arrested for disorderly conduct (i.e., calling him a liar). Hylan’s bodyguard declines Craig’s order to arrest him.

Before sending Trotsky to southern Russia for his, um, health, after firing him as war minister, Stalin has all his papers confiscated.

Albania keeps trying to get foreigners to come and be king. The latest to turn them down: Sir Charles Edward Archibald Watkin Hamilton (that’s just one person, I think) and Lord Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn Headley (probably 3 or 4 people). Headley, whose title is Irish, is the president of the British Moslem Society. He notes that the monarch position has no salary “and the almost certainty of assassination.” Also, they didn’t meet his financial terms.

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Today -100: January 29, 1925: Oh I think it made some difference

The president of the British Optical Association, W.R. Baker, warns against eyestrain from doing crossword puzzles.

Harlan Fiske Stone’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is held in open session. He answers questions about the DOJ prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler for “conspiracy,” including why a 2nd prosecution was in DC when the first was in Montana, where all the witnesses are. The NYT, at least, is entirely satisfied with Stone’s answers, asserting, “Whether the man whose prosecution he thought necessary was a Senator or a colored janitor made no difference to him.”

Nome, Alaska has a diphtheria outbreak. Antitoxin is being rushed there by dog sled. Should take a couple of weeks. 

Gloria Swanson marries Henri, the Marquis de la Falaise, her translator on “Madame Sans-Gêne,” a lost film which is being shot in France. This is the 25-year-old Swanson’s third marriage, but by no means her last.

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Today -100: January 28, 1925: Of child labor

The Constitutional Amendment permitting Congressional regulation of child labor has now been defeated by enough states that it cannot be ratified. Arguments against: it goes against states’ rights; it goes against parental rights; kids are perfectly well protected already; cotton mills need child labor; farms need child labor.

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Today -100: January 27, 1925: A Harlan Stone gathers no... no, that doesn’t really work, does it?

The Senate, in a secret session, an hour of which was spent complaining about all the leaks from the last secret session, which we know because of, you know, leaks, sends Harlan Fiske Stone’s Supreme Court nomination back to the Judiciary Committee. He will be called before the committee to explain his indictment of Sen. Burton Wheeler. It will be the first time a nominee to the Court ever had to testify, which is why we don’t know if the first 72 justices liked beer.

Coolidge wants the budget reduced to $3 billion, with all the savings going to tax cuts.

The Texas Senate rejects ratification of the Amendment to the US Constitution allowing Congress to regulate child labor, by a vote of 19 to 2.

Arthur Conan Doyle is opening a psychic bookshop. Near Westminster Abbey.

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Today -100: January 26, 1925: Of shoot-outs and immunity

Remember Herrin, Illinois, the location of so much Klan-related violence and nonsense last year? A shoot-out takes the lives of 6, evenly from both sides I think, including Glenn Young, the man employed by the Klan as a dry-raider who was briefly chief of police (I don’t think I knew at the time that that was during a day when the real chief of police had been kidnapped), and Deputy Sheriff Ora Thomas, the head of the anti-Klux faction, who shoot each other to death. It’s not clear which side fired first.

Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone is messing up his nomination to the Supreme Court by pursuing an obviously partisan, groundless conspiracy prosecution of Sen. Burton Wheeler, who led the investigation of the Teapot Dome scandal. Stone has offered to allow Wheeler to testify and to have his own witnesses at the DC Grand Jury – if, and only if, he waives his congressional immunity.

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Today -100: January 25, 1925: Of eclipses, the moral opinion of the community, wide-bottom trousers, earls, and torrios

There’s an eclipse. Which is evidently a huge deal. Someone needs to hurry up and invent television.

Pres. Coolidge repeats his support for the US joining the World Court. He says the Court doesn’t even need a military to enforce its decrees because it can do so through “intelligence of the mass of individuals and the moral opinion of the community.” Sure, let’s try that.

Coolidge also expresses his opinion on wide-bottom trousers, which college men are wearing these days, and he does not approve. DOES NOT APPROVE.

Former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is made an earl, the first Earl of Oxford and Asquith, which is another way of saying he’s given up on leading the Liberals back into power, which he can’t do from the House of Lords. Or from the Commons, where he lost his seat at the last election.

Chicago mob boss Johnny Torrio is shot five times in front of his home, a week after being convicted of Prohibition law crimes. This will precipitate his decision to retire, for a time anyway.

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Today -100: January 24, 1925: Covering his Butt

Prussian Minister-President (prime minister) Otto Braun and his cabinet resign, despite still holding a majority of the Diet, under an onslaught from the Communists and the Monarchists.

There’s a military coup in Chile, as was the custom.

A visiting British theatrical producer says American plays need a censor to curb their “daring outspokenness.” That producer: Sir Alfred Butt.

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Today -100: January 23, 1925: Of governors, leagues, kiddie workers, and radio

The Fergusons move into the Executive Mansion in Austin. Gov. Ma supervises the movers, saying she can be governor and housekeeper at the same time. Friends of her husband, the disgraced former governor, are suggesting to him that his hanging around the governor’s office every day is undermining her.

Costa Rica withdraws from the League of Nations, the first, but not the last, country to do so. I think they just found the dues to be too onerous.

The Oklahoma House rejects the child labor amendment to the US Constitution.

Theatrical producer Lee Shubert says the novelty of radio will wear off and people will return to the theatre.

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Today -100: January 22, 1925: It will be human

Texas Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson calls on the Legislature to cut taxes and to remove the Texas Rangers from Prohibition work (previous Gov. Pat Neff was a bit of a dry fanatic). She wants a tax on smoking.

The South Dakota State Senate and the Delaware House reject the Child Labor Amendment to the US Constitution.

A new magazine, The New Yorker, will appear next month. “It will be human,” says the announcement. “It will be what is commonly called sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. It will hate bunk.”

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Today -100: January 21, 1925: No bouquet

The Senate votes 40-30 to condemn the Harding Administration’s selling of the Teapot Dome leases. This finishes the matter as far as the Senate is concerned.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Hey, you know what might take the edge off?  A little opium. Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, the chief rep of (checks notes) Britain, rejects the US proposal for a goal of ending opium smoking in the Far East within 15 years, which he says would just be a farce. He is, however, forced to withdraw the comment he made yesterday that the US uses more opium & other narcotics than India, where they grow the stuff.

Miriam A. “Ma” Ferguson is sworn in as governor of Texas, taking the traditional oath not to participate in any duels. “She carried no bouquet.”

During a trial of 10 Jersey City cops & 2 others, Sen. Edward Edwards (D-NJ), a man so almost nice they named him almost twice, is accused by a federal agent of being a bootlegger who was paid $3,800 for 100 cases of whisky in a sting operation. The deal fell through before any booze was delivered. Some of the testimony is a little implausible. The senator hasn’t been called as a witness (and won’t be).

Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes tells Latin American countries that they should also adopt the Monroe Doctrine, which certainly isn’t about maintaining US hegemony in the hemisphere, perish the thought. Also, the failure to end the US occupation of Nicaragua is because the Nicaraguan president asked us to stay, and we’ll withdraw those marines from Haiti just as soon as there’s “a reasonable prospect of peace and stability.”

Leon Trotsky is (finally) fired as the minister of war. He is accused of expressing anti-, or at least non-Communist views. And he refused to acknowledge his mistakes. REFUSED TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS MISTAKES.

A Connecticut man who owns a cat that can predict storms will offer him to Pres. Coolidge.

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Today -100: January 20, 1925: No practical work can be accomplished by yelling

Hans Luther appears before the Reichstag as German chancellor for the first time, to continuous interruptions from Communist deputies. Pissed off, he tells them, “I think I voice the feelings of the entire body when I tell you that no practical work can be accomplished by yelling.” Boy, he doesn’t know his country very well, does he.

The B’nai Sholem Temple Israel of Chicago is bombed, but it’s not anti-semitism: the temple was just sold to a black congregation.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Sadly, that’s actually Sol Bloom and not, as the NYT Index would have it, Sloom, because “Congressman Sloom Has Quinsy” sounds like a lesser Dr. Seuss book (today -100, by the way, Theodor Geisel is still at Dartmouth, a few months from adopting the moniker Dr. Seuss so he could secretly continue publishing in the college humor magazine after being caught hosting a gin party and possibly peeing out the window [he said it was seltzer] and being banned by Dean Craven Laycock – which is more... Dickens? Wodehouse?... than Seuss, really – from extracurriculars).

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Today -100: January 19, 1925: Be ready for a fight

Leon Trotsky is fired from the War Council. He is threatened, if he continues to show “disobedience,” with removal from the Politburo and Executive Committee. 

The NYT claims the election of Miriam “Ma” Ferguson as governor of Texas is the death knell for the Ku Klux Klan in that state. The Legislature is considering a bill to make assault by masked people punishable by death. 

Sunday was rally day in Germany, with Communists in Berlin rocking the slogan “Revolution is what we need,” and monarchists in Magdeburg told to “Be ready for a fight.” The Communists signify their opposition to the Dawes Plan with a man in an Uncle Sam costume leading a German worker by a chain.

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Today -100: January 18, 1925: Of tainted or perverted information, dancingest inaugurations, and sacramental wine

Coolidge warns a dinner of the American Society of Newspaper Editors against propaganda: “Of education, and of real information we cannot get too much, but of propaganda which is tainted or perverted information we cannot have too little.”

Italy’s Parliament passes Mussolini’s electoral reform bill by 268 to 19, but strips the plural voting provisions, which I guess even Mussolini realized tipped power to the upper classes too much at the expense of the working classes. So it’s mostly about returning to single-member constituencies from proportional representation.

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson will be sworn in as governor of Texas Tuesday and it will be the “dancingest” inauguration ever, despite the protests of certain church ladies. But there will be no Texas Rangers, because that body was just declared by a court to have been illegally constituted.

The Denver Catholic diocese says it will defy the new law against sacramental wine.

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Today -100: January 17, 1925: Of prohibition and ag

Coolidge thinks a proposed law providing for mandatory imprisonment for violating Prohibition laws is excessive.

Herbert Hoover declines to become secretary of agriculture, saying he can do more for farmers from Commerce.

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Today -100: January 16, 1925: No more disturbed than any other country

Tammany Hall leader Big Tom Foley, described as Gov. Al Smith’s “political godfather,” dies at 73.

Pres. Coolidge is considering moving Herbert Hoover from Commerce to Agriculture, which seems to me like a demotion.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Wyoming Gov. Nellie Taylor Ross does the unthinkable.

Headline of the Day -100:  

NYPD Police Commissioner Richard Enright calls for everyone to be required to carry a police i.d. including their photograph and fingerprints. “While the Commissioner did not specify women, he was understood to have included them.” He’s just been on a tour of South America and this is the system in Buenos Aires. He also wants to register aliens, which he says would help solve the sporadic Tong wars in Chinatown which so baffle the police. And the feds should ban the sale of pistols. (An editorial tomorrow -100 wonders how long the i.d. photo would be kept: “The unfortunate man who loses his hair at 30 will be in danger of immediate arrest.”)

Poland and the Free State of Danzig may go to war over, um, mail boxes. Poland exceeded its treaty rights in the city by placing mail boxes, which it says it had a right to do and Danzig says it didn’t. Some Danzigers repainted the boxes in the old German imperial colors, and that’s when Poland started threatening war. The League of Nations Commissioner Mervyn MacDonnell is siding with city authorities over the whole, um, mail box deal.

A resolution in the Italian Parliament saying that it is impossible to hold a general election as long as the government suppresses newspapers and individual liberty is supported by former primes minister Giovanni Giolitti, Antonio Salandra and Vittorio Orlando.

Mussolini says “Italy is no more disturbed than any other country.”

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Today -100: January 15, 1925: Really too much

Italy’s Communist MPs end their boycott of Parliament in order to participate in the debate on Mussolini’s new electoral law. And by participate, I mean praise Lenin and Russia, sing the Red Flag, and denounce the bourgeoisie, while Mussolini says, “This is really too much.”

The Italian Freemasons dissolve ahead of the proposed law against secret societies.

German Finance Minister Hans Luther, who belongs to no party, forms a new cabinet, including 4 Nationalists. If I understand this correctly, Luther just went ahead and negotiated a cabinet without having been asked to do so by Pres. Ebert. This will be Weimar’s first right-wing government, but not its last.

Chicago bans the eating of raw oysters, punishable by a $25 fine. 

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Today -100: January 14, 1925: A coolness might result

French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot warns that “if the Soviets continue to carry out a Soviet policy in France, a coolness might result.” Grigori Zinoviev, the head of the Comintern, recently ordered the French Communist Party to exert itself in the municipal elections, which is obviously scandalous.

Banker/forger Fred Pollman, who repudiated the pardon he bought from Kansas then-Gov. Jonathan Davis, tries to present his pardon to the new governor. Who refuses to accept it. The attorney general says they may have to declare Davis’s last pardons & paroles void.

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Today -100: January 13, 1925: Of bitter and unreasoning oppositions, secret societies, and musical commanders

Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son are arrested on the morning of the day his term expired rather than after he left office, as was expected. Davis complains that the arrest shows the “bitter and unreasoning opposition” to his governorship (bitter and unreasoning opposition is the worst kind of opposition). He claims to want his pardoning processes to be investigated by the Legislature. Were brown paper bags employed? that sort of thing, probably.

Mussolini introduces a bill to ban secret societies, i.e. the Masons.

Richard Strauss is given the new title of “Commander-in-Chief of Austrian Music.”

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Today -100: January 12, 1925: Of pardons and tommy guns

County Attorney Tinkham Veale, which is evidently a real name, will have Kansas Gov. Jonathan Davis and his son arrested immediately after his term ends today (the governor’s term, not the son’s) for taking bribes in exchange for pardons. All of his pardons (the governor’s, not the son’s) are being looked into, as well they should be.

If no one can form a majority cabinet in Germany, President Friedrich Ebert may use emergency powers to appoint a chancellor to operate without Reichstag support.

In Chicago, Al Capone’s car is shot up by gangsters with tommy guns, as was the custom. (Correction: Actually it wasn’t yet the custom. This is the very first use of a Thompson submachine gun in gang warfare.) Capone wasn’t in the car at the time, but inside a restaurant whose name I’ve been unable to discover. Capone will soon buy an expensive bullet-proof car. And have a few people killed in retaliation. As was the custom.

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