Today -100: April 30, 1925: Of rich man’s budgets, plots, and smells

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill presents his budget to Parliament. His Labour predecessor in the job, Philip Snowden, calls it “the worst rich man’s budget ever presented.” It indeed drastically reduces income tax for the super-rich.

The British Foreign Office denies newspaper stories that there’s a “Red plot” to assassinate Foreign Minister Austen Chamberlain.

Indiana’s new prohibition enforcement act admits as evidence cops’ claiming that they smelled liquor.

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Today -100: April 29, 1925: Of war games, world mental poise & equilibrium, uniforms, and fines

War games in Hawaii indicate that an enemy could capture the territory’s naval bases if they have good enough weather.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill announces that Britain will return to the gold standard. Adolph Miller of the US Federal Reserve says this is a great step “toward establishment of a world mental poise and equilibrium.”

Hindenburg is trying to decide whether to wear his military uniform or civvy clothes when he’s sworn in as president in the Reichstag, where it is against protocol to wear a uniform, but right afterwards he’ll review a military parade, where it is against protocol for the former field marshal not to wear a uniform.

150 Klansmen hold a meeting in a field in Northbridge, Massachusetts, then are blocked from leaving by a larger group of anti-kluxxers.

A Sunday school class in Mount Holly, New Jersey pays $25 towards the fine of bootlegger Mary Storline, who told the court at her trial in November that she was supporting her 5 children and a sick husband. The judge remitted the rest of the $350 fine.

I’ve been noticing that the “Great War” is increasingly being referred to as “The World War.”

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Today -100: April 28, 1925: A defiance of the Allies and a defiance of Europe and America

The French are not best pleased by the election of Hindenburg as German president. Le Temps says, “It is because the German people seek to wipe out the memory and sentiment of their defeat that they have given this honor to the great defeated of 1918. ... The election of Field Marshal Hindenburg is a defiance of the Allies and a defiance of Europe and America.”

Former kaiser Wilhelm, on the other hand, is quite pleased, and says he would also be quite pleased to return from exile and resume his kaisership if, and only if, he’s invited (according to a vaguely sourced story).

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Today -100: April 27, 1925: Oh the huma... no that doesn’t really work

Paul von Hindenburg wins the German presidential election run-off (can it be called a run-off if he wasn’t in the first round?) with 49.3%, Wilhelm Marx getting 45.3%, and Communist candidate Ernst Thälmann getting 6.4%. The field marshal did well in right-wing areas like East Prussia, as expected, but also in Bavaria, where some expected the Catholic Marx to do better.

The NYT says Washington is “unperturbed” by the election of the monarchist militarist.

Women in the Communist “Red Cat organization” ride around Berlin on trucks singing “the famous Miau-Maiu song,” whatever that might be (it can’t be the Rossini thing, right? that would make no sense at all).

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Today -100: April 26, 1925: Of trials, huge boys, and straw hats

Franz Kafka’s The Trial is published, posthumously, in German. It won’t be translated into English for more than a decade.

Headline of the Day -100:

Well, a huge boys’ waddle.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: April 25, 1925: My most sacred hope is to banish the horrors of war

The prospects of a Bulgaria-Yugoslav war seem to be fading, as France and Britain tell them to knock it off.

London police are pretending to think that the Reds will do a Sofia St. Nedelya Church thing and blow up the church where the service will be held for Gen. Lord Rawlinson, the commander-in-chief of the Indian Army since 1920, whose body has been returned from Delhi. The cops are inspecting every inch of St. Margaret’s Church for infernal devices, not neglecting the organ’s pipes.

Sen. Burton Wheeler is acquitted of the bullshit charge of representing an oil company before the Dept of Interior. The jury deliberated 10 minutes. They got dinner first. A minute later Wheeler got a telegram informing him that his wife had given birth back in DC while he was stuck in Montana with this nonsense.

German presidential candidates Hindenburg and Wilhelm Marx both make 15-minute radio addresses to the nation. The field marshal: “I proclaim to the world my most sacred hope is to banish the horrors of war”. Oh sure, you say that AFTER you lose a war.

The German republicans have been claiming that the US will halt loans to Germany if Hindenburg wins.

Outside a political meeting in Montmartre, a clash between Communists and Nationalists (probably Action Française or a similar nationalist/proto-fascist group) leaves 3 of the latter dead, allegedly shot from behind. In the National Assembly, the Right demands the suppression of Communist organizations.

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Today -100: April 24, 1925: Some good ones

Calvin Coolidge meets Will Rogers for 10 minutes at the White House. Afterwards, Rogers says Cal does have a sense of humor and has “some good ones,” but gives no examples. (I do know that Cal liked to buzz for the Secret Service, then hide under his desk while hilarity ensued).

5 British Fascisti are acquitted for the kidnapping last month of Harry Pollitt to keep him from a Communist-adjacent conference. I guess they portrayed it as a jolly jape and the jury swallowed it.

Fayette Avery McKenzie resigns as president of historically black Fisk University. He’s spent his presidency cracking down on the students, closing their newspaper, abolishing the student council, banning students from walking with students of the opposite sex, etc., and students and alumni are suggesting maybe replacing him with an actual black person. The first black president will in fact take office in 1947.

Wilson Godfrey Harvey, governor of South Carolina for 8 months in 1922-3, is convicted of violating banking laws at his Enterprise Bank (possibly for accepting deposits after he knew the bank was going bankrupt) and sentenced to either 4 months in the pokey or a fine of $400. He opts for the latter.

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Today -100: April 23, 1925: Something something cheese

The Wisconsin attorney general decides that the Ku Klux Klan cannot incorporate within the state.

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Today -100: April 22, 1925: If you can’t trust a poet to forecast elections, who can you trust?

In the Montana trumped-up trial of Sen. Burton Wheeler, the government sprung a surprise witness yesterday, George B. Hayes – not to be confused with George “Gabby” Hayes – a lawyer who claims that Interior Dept solicitor E.S. Booth, acting for Wheeler, called him to ask him to meet Wheeler at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Wheeler asked him to intervene with the Land Office re oil & gas prospecting permits. Wheeler is calling a Bell Telephone employee to come from DC to Montana to testify that there was no such phone call.

The NYT goes to the experts for intel on the forthcoming German presidential elections: passengers on a ship arriving from Hamburg. Evidently, Hindenburg is gonna lose, at least according to a couple of bankers and the poet Christoph Kaergel.

Headline of the Day -100:

The Puerto Rican Legislature passed a bill legalizing cockfighting. The ASPCA is lobbying Gov. Horace Towner to veto it.

Some time earlier this month, The Lost World was shown on a plane flight between London & Paris, the first feature-length in-flight movie.

It is pointed out to NYC Mayor John Hylan that the reason people keep getting run over crossing the street to get to the 4th Street entrance to the subway in Brooklyn is that it’s IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING STREET.

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Today -100: April 21, 1925: We are destined to live in peace for all time

The Bulgarian army, despite its treaty-limited size, seems perfectly capable of killing suspected Communists on the street by the hundreds.

Bulgarian police kill Capt. Ninkoff, the supposed Communist ringleader of the St Nedelya Church bombing – which I don’t think he was – “resisting arrest.”

A US Navy cruiser lands at Ceiba, Honduras. I guess there’s a revolt going on.

Japanese Ambassador to the US Tsuneo Matsudaira tells the Harvard Club that war between the US & Japan is “a matter of physical impossibility, and we are destined to live in peace for all time.” So that’s reassuring.

The Treasury Dept says it’s pretty much stopped rum-running.

The Associated Press, which has hitherto banned the broadcast of its articles on radio, will now allow it for news “of transcendent importance.”

Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson is finally in prison, awaiting trial. I’m expecting intensive coverage, as previewed by the NYT describing his first prison meal: fried liver and gravy, mashed potatoes, bread & water. He enjoyed it.

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Today -100: April 20, 1925: I am not the class murderer which I am pictured

Bulgaria is trying all public order offences in military courts, resulting in death penalties galore, some of which, possibly hundreds, are being immediately carried out.

Paul von Hindenburg, “77 years old and looking it,” gives the opening speech of his presidential campaign in Hanover. He complains about his candidacy being portrayed as signaling “imminent military reaction” (imminent military reaction is the worst sort of military reaction) and looks back fondly to the period when “I had the good fortune to hold the enemy back from our borders with a united nation behind me.” And a large heap of dead soldiers in front of him. He does acknowledge the Weimar Constitution, semi-believably. “I am not a militarist,” he says, not especially believably. “Also I am not the class murderer which I am pictured.”

Tonight is... the night they raided Minsky’s (not the first nor the last time). I’ve recently rewatched that movie and realized I’ve been mixing up Britt Ekland and Elke Sommer my entire life.

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Today -100: April 19, 1925: Of cavaliers, dragons, aviatrixes, and shallow ponds

Bulgaria is said to be rife with fighting, assassinations, and plundering, but who knows since the government imposed censorship and cut off all communications with the outside world. It’s afraid the church bombing was the signal for the start of a revolution. Martial law is declared, and house-to-house searches commence in Sofia. One theory: this is all about Yugoslavia trying to absorb Bulgaria. But there many other conspiracy theories making the rounds. The leaders of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, which probably doesn’t rhyme so delightfully in Bulgarian, supposedly disappeared days before the explosion. Bulgaria asks the Powers to allow it to increase the size of its army, which is limited by the Neuilly peace treaty to 30,000, and to lend Bulgaria some planes so they can bomb Communists.

The National Bureau of Information and Education protests to Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot against the planned execution of William Cavalier, now 15 but 14 when convicted of murdering his grandmother.

Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson and 2 others are indicted for 1st degree murder of Madge Oberholtzer (the 1st-degree part is that they didn’t get her to a doctor after she took poison after D.C. raped her).

The NYT says that Jews in Eastern European countries are stuck there, given the limited capacity of Palestine and the US’s immigration quotas. So Jews and their Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Romanian neighbors “must make up their minds to live together.”

The French Federation of Aeronautics bans women pilots and demands that Adrienne Bolland return her license. She tells them to suck it.

Headline of the Day -100:

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Today -100: April 18, 1925: A most difficult period

The left-centrist candidate for president of Germany, Wilhelm Marx, comes out for annexation of Austria. That’s... new.

Bulgarian PM Aleksandar Tsankov says “Bulgaria is passing through a most difficult period,” blaming the various assassinations and bombings and shit on Communists supported by Russia. Which is actually true.

I can’t find a date for this more specific than April, so I’ll just stick it here. The Crisis quotes Sen. Coleman Blease (D-SC): “I think the greatest mistake a white man ever made was to put his hand in his pocket to educate a nigger. You can’t educate a horse or a mule or a cow, and you can’t educate a nigger. They weren’t made to be educated. We don’t need them for lawyers or pharmacists and all that. They were made to cut wood, draw water, and work in the fields.”

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Today -100: April 17, 1925: A cunning plan

Remember the assassination of Gen. Konstantin Georgiev in Sofia, Bulgaria a couple of days ago? Turns out it was bait. During his funeral, attended by many generals and the Cabinet, the roof of the St Nedelya Church is blown up by an “infernal device” (which is the worst sort of device), killing 213 people, including Sofia mayor Paskal Paskalev; Gen. Stefan Nerezov, chief of Staff of the Bulgarian Army; former minister of war Kalin Naydenov; and several other generals and MPs. Cabinet members, who the positioning of the bomb suggests were the primary targets, escape because of the timing of the explosion. There was a large crowd in part because the Bulgarian Communist Party forged invitations and sent them out. Tsar Boris missed the funeral fun, at least that particular funeral fun, as he was attending the funerals of the people who died in the assassination attempt on himself.

The new Painlevé Cabinet in France will no longer have a “Ministry of the Devastated Regions.”

Opponents of the Cabinet, and of Joseph Caillaux in particular, plan to ask him, the first time he appears in the Senate, “Who started the war?”

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Today -100: April 16, 1925: Of diplomatresses, caillauxes, and singing sargents

Lucile Atcherson, 30, is appointed 3rd secretary of the US legation at Berne. A suffragist activist back in the day, Atcherson was the first woman in the diplomatic service, in 1923. Naturally, the NYT spells her name wrong. In 1922, Harding nominated her to the foreign service, but the Senate rejected her, considering it unseemly for a single woman to travel abroad. In a few years, lack of promotion (job assessments said the Swiss diplomats wouldn’t invite a mere woman to their reindeer games), a transfer to Panama, and an impending marriage will force her resignation.

The French United Socialists won’t join a Paul Painlevé-led government but agree not to block it either, as they would with Briand, so we’re a go. Painlevé asks Joseph Caillaux to be finance minister for what would be the third time, although the first since his wife shot the editor of Le Figaro dead and since he was convicted of treason. He asks Aristide Briand to be foreign minister, which should be fun because Briand is NOT a fan of Monsieur Caillaux. C’s ministership will not make it any easier to get approval of the of the government from the Senate (which was the body that held his treason trial). The right has never forgiven him for not starting a war with Germany when he was PM in 1912.

Maryland will stop hindering tourists driving home from vacations in Florida.

Gay or bi or whatever painter John Singer Sargent dies at 69.

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Today -100: April 15, 1925: Clipped!

Headline of the Day -100:

Shots are fired at Tsar Boris III’s car, killing the director of the Bulgaria National Museum and a servant but not his tsarishness. “The King’s experience was a thrilling one...” One interesting detail: he and the remaining members of his entourage returned fire. Does the tsar carry a gun? 

Elsewhere on Assassinations Day, which is evidently a Bulgarian national holiday, Gen. Konstantin Georgiev, one of the leaders in the 1923 coup, is shot dead as he goes to his church in Sofia with his granddaughter for services. (Spoiler Alert: ... ... nah). His assassin, Atanas Todovichin, will escape to the USSR, where he’ll be executed in 1938, as was the custom.

Madge Oberholtzer, who was assaulted by KKK leader D.C. Stephenson, dies of the poison she took after the attack a month ago (the Grand Lizard, or whatever his current title is, prevented her getting medical assistance). She was 28.

Aristide Briand fails to form a French cabinet after the United Socialists refuse to participate, so the task ping pongs back to Paul Painlevé. It’s believed that if Painlevé fails again, Briand will be given a chance to fail again.

Georgia Superior Court Judge Ogden Persons rules that a man can spank his wife.

Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, my favorite of his films, opens.

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Today -100: April 14, 1925: Of industrial relations and license plates

The US Supreme Court overturns Kansas’s law requiring compulsory arbitration of labor disputes before the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, saying it violates liberty of contract and property rights. AFL president William Green applauds the decision, so maybe I’m not understanding what’s going on here.

German republicans spread a rumor that Hindenburg’s presidential campaign is bankrolled by former kaiser Wilhelm. Probably not true. Probably. In response, the monarchist right accuses republicans of taking “foreign bribes.”

Temporary automobile license plates issued by Florida to tourists are not being honored by Maryland, so tourists driving through the state on their way home are being soaked for temporary MD plates and are getting stuck in their cars overnight waiting for offices to open or, if they’re really pissed off, taking the train to their home state and coming back with a plate.

The film The Wizard of Oz is released, starring Dorothy Dwan as Dorothy and Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodman and, evidently, a “trained duck.” It doesn’t sound like it resembles the 1939 movie at all. The NYT says it’s “the type of rough and tumble farce that sends bright faces from the theatre.”

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Today -100: April 13, 1925: Painlevé feels the... levé

Paul Painlevé gives up on forming a French government, so it’s Aristide Briand’s turn to make an attempt.

Last Friday, Coolidge opined that the French government’s financial difficulties were not Herriot’s fault but inherited by him from previous governments. The French consider this unacceptable interference in their politics. (Of course these days J.D. Vance, if that is his real name, can lecture European countries on being unfair to fascist parties).

Newfoundland women get the vote from the age of 25 (men have it at 21).

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Today -100: April 12, 1925: Painlevé brings the... levé

Paul Painlevé of the Parti républicain-socialiste will be the next French prime minister, a job he briefly held in 1917. Aristide Briand, another former PM (I mean, who in the Interwar period wasn’t prime minister at some point?), will be foreign secretary.

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Today -100: April 11, 1925: Rolling eggs? In this economy?

The traditional White House Easter egg roll will take place this year, despite being on the birthday of Calvin Coolidge Jr., who died last July.

The Earl of Balfour, of Balfour Declaration fame, is greeted in Damascus by a riotous mob which forces him to skedaddle out of town.

French PM Édouard Herriot resigns after losing a vote in the Senate on exceeding the legal limit on the circulation of bank notes. He was in office 10 months.

Roberto Farinacci, secretary of the National Fascist Party of Italy and basically the #2 man in Italy after The Duck, for now, responds to recent Fascist-Communist violence by calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty and for exile “to one of Italy’s islands” for enemies of Fascism. He names several deputies and senators he’d like arrested.

More violence in Herrin, Illinois, in the lead up to the mayoral election, but it’s Klan-on-Klan violence, so that’s okay. The store of Marshal McCormack, a kluxer candidate opposed by other kluxers, is dynamited.

Klansmen in Jasper, Alabama are being sentenced for flogging a hotel clerk who “talked about” the Klan.

The National Geographic Society thinks the Arctic expedition it’s sponsoring, led by Donald MacMillan, will find a whole new continent somewhere between Alaska and the North Pole. The use of Navy planes will make possible a summer Arctic trip, which should make visibility much easier (Spoiler Alert: it won’t).

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