Today -100: December 31, 1925: Of pensions, fevers, longevity, and inventions

John Hylan resigns as New York City mayor one day before his term expires, which for some convoluted reason is the only way he gets a pension ($4,205 a year). Outgoing Police Commissioner Richard Enright does the same ($5,000). Temps will fill in for 24 hours.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover warns against the “fever of speculation” in stocks and real estate. Well I’m sure he’ll fix all that. He’s also against buying by instalment plan.

Dr. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr College tells an American Sociological Society meeting that by the year 2000 humans will live to 100 on average and some to 200. Hart lived to 78.

Nils Aasen, Norwegian inventor of both the hand grenade and the anti-personnel mine, dies at 47 of tuberculosis brought on by a nervous breakdown. He was having trouble trying to invent an insomnia mask.

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Today -100: December 30, 1925: But I was opposed to blood-letting

The British are so excited that Princess Astrid of Sweden – “according to an unnamed Swedish diplomat, she is one of the prettiest girls in Europe” (and what better judges of feminine pulchritude can there be than unnamed Swedish diplomats, I ask you) – will be visiting Buckingham Palace, so they’ve decided she’ll probably marry Prince Edward. She won’t. She’s 20, he’s 31.

Headline of the Day -100:

No one’s heard from Leon Trotsky in a while, but at the Communist Congress when Zinoviev reminds everyone that last year Trotsky was accused of semi-Menshevism – semi-Menshevism! – he pipes up “Correct!”. Stalin notes that he had opposed the demand by the Leningrad Committee, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who are now at odds with Stalin, for Trotsky to be removed from the Politburo and the Communist Party: “They demanded blood, but I was opposed to blood-letting, thinking, before long what would be left of the party.” What indeed.

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Today -100: December 29, 1925: Murderous delirium is the worst kind of delirium

With the Radical members of the French Cabinet rebelling against PM Aristide Briand’s financial proposals, Briand threatens to throw them out of the Cabinet and form a new one in alliance with the Right Center.

Mexico bans marijuana which, we are informed, produces “murderous delirium. Its addicts often become insane.”

The District of Columbia bans horses on four major streets.

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Today -100: December 28, 1925: You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to live in that town, Philadelphia, anyway

Smedley Darlington Butler, former Philadelphia police chief, gives a blistering speech to the Adult Bible Classes Federation of Pennsylvania, calling Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick a “disloyal chief” who fired him because he insisted on going after big people as well as “little dummies” for Prohibition violations (you could be forgiven for reading his remarks about crime and thinking that Prohibition was the only law on the books). He says of Kendrick’s claim that he fired him because he didn’t give him proper respect: “No, I didn’t. I should have pulled his noise.” He says the fundamental issue today is “whether we Americans are to be governed by a lot of bootleggers and naturalized foreigners.” He bitches that the people of Philly (Pheople?) didn’t support him and are “getting about what they deserve.”

In the audience is Gov. Gifford Pinchot, who is said to want Butler to succeed him as governor, a plan Butler explicitly disclaims. Pinchot says Butler showed that a Man could enforce the law “even in Philadelphia.”

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Today -100: December 27, 1925: Turkish delight

The new Turkish Civil Code ends the right of husbands to unilaterally divorce their wives. Divorce will now be granted only by courts and only for cause – insanity, desertion, infidelity etc. This will not be applied retroactively to annul, say, the divorce that Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk decreed for himself in August.

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Today -100: December 26, 1925: Of greetings and non-pardons

German politicians including Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann (whose name the NYT gets wrong) send messages of Christmas greetings to the US, which were recorded on wax discs and broadcast on US radio stations. Americans were not used to hearing the voices of European leaders. The records also have songs from the Berlin State Opera. Part of the program was recorded in Stuttgart on a piano wire by the telegrapone process

California Gov. Friend Richardson rejects the practice of giving Christmas pardons, saying Californians will “enjoy this sacred day better with the knowledge that a score of murderers, robbers and pickpockets have not been turned loose upon them.”

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Today -100: December 25, 1925: If sorcery is outlawed, only outlaws will have sorcery

Pres. Harding’s widow Florence, who died a year ago, burned his papers after his death, we are just now hearing. Let the conspiracy theories begin!

A Mississippi grand jury indicts Coahoma County Sheriff Dr. S. W. Glass and 3 deputies for their role (unspecified here) in the lynching of a black man, Lindsey Coleman, after he was acquitted of murder.

Turkey bans sorcery.

A Christmas party hosted by the Italian gang at the Adonis Social and Athletic Club, a Brooklyn speakeasy, is rudely interrupted by the White Hand Gang and its leader, Richard “Peg-Leg” Lonergan. Tipped off in advance, the Italians and their special visiting guest Alfonse Capone kill four of the White Handers. Capone kills Lonergan personally and I guess the Italians keep Lonergan’s peg-leg as a trophy. This is the Adonis Club Massacre, although you’d think Christmas Massacre would have been better. It’s Capone’s first “massacre.” Capone will tell police that he was helping out as... the doorman.

Headline of the Day -100:

A heart attack, not some sort of Port Huron wicker man situation.

The Club Alabam’, off Broadway, offers a very blackface Xmas. Dinner de Luxe for 3 bucks, 6-9 pm, dancing from 10; god knows what happens between 9 & 10. Probably not a massacre.

The NYT Sunday Magazine will have, I guess this upcoming Sunday, an article on the Rhinelander v. Rhinelander trial.

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Today -100: December 24, 1925: Wherein is revealed the pest of our age

Pope Pius declares a new holiday (yay!): the Feast of Christ the King. The idea is that it will remind people of that obscure 1st-century chatterbox and combat “the pest of our age,” laicism, which lowers Christianity to the level of other religions, you know, the false ones. Also, the Catholic Church should have “independence from civil power.”

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler claims he resigned as Philadelphia’s director of public safety not because he was ordered to by the Marines or because Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick had fired his ass, but because Kendrick demanded that he “lay off the big places” in Prohibition raids. He had wanted to padlock the Ritz-Carlton; places like that will be important to the city’s finances in the sesquicentennial year. The Smedster withdraws his resignation from the Marines.

The Ku Klux Klan, pissed off at the Salt Lake City ordinance against mask-wearing, protests against someone wearing false whiskers – FALSE WHISKERS! – while collecting for the poor dressed as Santa Claus. So Santa will no longer be allowed to stalk the streets of Salt Lake in disguise.

The NYT responds to American Federation of Labor Pres. William Green’s screed against Italian Fascism by suggesting that it’s American unions that are the real dictators. “John L. Lewis is the Mussolini of the United Mine Workers”, it says, for refusing to submit the coal strike to arbitration. And not just here: “England is threatened by the unsocial, uneconomic and anti-national exactions of labor unions.”

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Today -100: December 23, 1925: But I can still spit in their eye

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler has been on leave from the Marines for two years in order to be director of safety (police chief) for Philadelphia. He’s militarized the cops, encouraged them to shoot “bandits,” armed firemen, and extended his Prohibition raids to the Ritz-Carlton and other major hotels, putting him at odds with politicians, including Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick. But he has been refused permission to extend his leave, which ends next week; he has orders to go to San Diego. He even went to Washington to ty to persuade Coolidge to change his mind, but Coolidge wouldn’t see him. He previously threatened to defy his orders to return to the Marines, but backed down. Now he reverses again and resigns from the Marines. So he’s a little surprised to learn, an hour later, that Mayor Kendrick has fired his ass. He tells reporters, “Now we are in the open. If the mayor fires me, I’ll be nothing after January 1. I’ll be neither a marine nor a policeman. But I can still spit in their eye.”

The American Federation of Labor warns unionists to oppose Fascist infiltration as strongly as they do Communists. AFL Pres. William Green says “Fascismo is endeavoring to instill that blighting philosophy among the people of every nation.”

Pres. Coolidge accepts the League of Nations invitation to join in preparing for a disarmament conference. 

Russia and Turkey sign a peace treaty. It’s only for three years.

The NYT suggests that Mussolini’s “Brilliant evocations of the glorious Roman past and of a glorious future may be a way of winning popular acquiescence in a galling present.”

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Today -100: December 22, 1925: We must choose between slavery and vodka

Some Italians claim that Mussolini’s purported intention to declare Italy an empire, which was reported as breaking news a couple of days ago – and a week before that – actually meant a spiritual and cultural rather than a territorial empire. The Italian embassy in the US calls the empire reports absurd, absolutely fantastic, and misleading.

The All-Russian Communist Congress divides over whether to suppress the kulaks. Bukharin is offended that the radicals, led by Zinoviev, take the highly unusual step of demanding the right to submit a minority report. Stalin says a few things I don’t understand, including “we must choose between slavery and vodka.”

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Today -100: December 21, 1925: Of the government of Wall Street, distressing methods, and battleships

Benjamin Gitlow, the Communist leader pardoned by NY Gov. Al Smith last week, gives a speech calling for foreign industrial and farm workers living in the US to unite with negroes to “overthrow the government of Wall Street.”

The French Chamber of Deputies approves PM Aristide Briand’s Syrian policy. Killing Syrian, his policy is killing Syrians, or as he puts it, “It was a cruel thing that France was obliged to maintain order by distressing methods.”

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin premieres at The Bolshoi.

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Today -100: December 20, 1925: Very little future for aviation

Noted futurist H.G. Wells, asked to write for Airways magazine on the future of air travel, responds that as he has found it “unpunctual, untrustworthy and inconsiderate to the ordinary passenger, there is very little future for aviation.”

We are also informed that British planes in the future will be made of metal, since the shortage of wood during the war restricted production. Another story today says houses will also be made of metal in Britain, because bricklayers are refusing to speed up to meet the housing shortage.

Jewish groups in Hungary oppose the World Court reviewing the Hungarian law restricting the proportion of “races” in colleges to their proportion in the population. They’re afraid to base a challenge to the law on outsiders and on the Treaty of Trianon, the much-hated treaty imposed on Hungary after the Great War. 

A Kansas judge issues a state-wide injunction against Klan parades in regalia.

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Today -100: December 19, 1925: Wiggle wiggle

During the Senate debate on the US joining the World Court, Sen. Irvin Lenroot (R-Wisc.) points out that the Republican 1924 platform called for just that. William Borah (R-Idaho) responds “if a man could be conceived who thought this was an injurious proposition or detrimental to his country and would still vote for it because his platform said so, he would be the slimiest creature that ever wiggled his was through the United States Senate.” A simple no would have sufficed.

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Today -100: December 18, 1925: Of insubordination, fascist menaces, and Christmas trees

Col. Billy Mitchell is convicted of insubordination for expressing views on military aviation contrary to those of his superiors and is suspended for 5 years.

The French government thinks the “Fascist menace” is dissipating. It helps that the French Fascists and the monarchists are now fighting (literally), with the latter now finally united behind a single pretender to the crown, from the Bourbon line of the royal family (ousted in 1830) rather than the Orléans line (1848).

Italy’s commissioner for South Tyrol, which was awarded to Italy after the Great War, reverses a decree, part of Italy’s attempt to suppress the German language and culture, banning Christmas trees.

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Today -100: December 17, 1925: ‘Tis now Ankara’s turn to speak

Two far-right German monarchists, one a petty criminal who loves him some Hitler and one a former mental patient, are arrested for a plot to assassinate Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann. One of them told a lawyer about it and the lawyer told the police.

The League of Nations gives Britain a mandate over Iraq and sets a border between it and Turkey, which is not best pleased and still claims Mosul, responding “‘Tis now Ankara’s turn to speak.” Britain thinks there probably won’t be a war with Turkey. Probably. 

New York City Mayor-Elect Jimmy Walker pledges to make NY a clean city. Supposedly there’s been an influx of gamblers since the election, believing NY would be an open city.

Sir Basil Thomson, head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch during the Great War, is arrested in Hyde Park “committing an act in violation of public decency” with a Miss Thelma de Lava, which doesn’t sound like a real name but it is the one she gives the police. He also gives a fake name; both are bailed but fail to appear as ordered.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals awards the black servants of “turfman” John T. Hughes the money he left them in his will, rejecting the claims of his (white) relatives. So Ellen Davis, a former slave in her 80s, is now the richest black woman in the South. Her son, who is also Hughes’s son, also gets a legacy.

The State Democratic Women’s Association of Texas will not support Gov. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson for re-election. Nor will the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. I don’t think any women’s group supports her. The president of the Texas branch of the League of Women Voters is annoyed that people outside Texas think Ferguson’s election was a victory for women.

Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy is published.

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Today -100: December 16, 1925: With a friendly smile, respectful bow and doffing of the hat

Special constables seize their barracks in Belfast to demand compensation for their units being disbanded under the Irish agreement. Other cops in Derry & elsewhere in Northern Ireland refuse to hand in arms and equipment.

The Texas Textbook Commission removes references to evolution from a biology textbook.

People in Edineţi, a town in Bessarabia, which was annexed by Romania in 1918, will be required to salute Romanian officers, “with a friendly smile, respectful bow and doffing of the hat.” In the meantime, the Town Commandant’s hat will be paraded through the streets on a stick so the Edineţihoovians can practice the smiling, bowing, and doffing.

The Nacionalista & Democratic Parties of the Philippines Legislature agree to join together to fight for Filipino autonomy, in response to Coolidge’s State of the Union call for strengthening the power of the governor-general against the Legislature (and also the veto by Gov.-Gen. Leonard Wood last week of a bill for an independence plebiscite, but the NYT kinda missed that one).

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Today -100: December 15, 1925: Oh sure it looks easy now that you’ve explained it

Kip and Alice Rhinelander have scattered to the winds. Not the same winds, of course. He’s making sure she can’t serve him to sue for support, she’s, I dunno, escaping reporters? Anyway, the Ku Klux Klan are searching for her in Florida hotels in which she’s thought to be staying. Not ominous at all. (Update: she’s actually still in New Rochelle; the NYT helpfully provides her address.)

The Republican Senate leadership decide not to ostracize newly elected young Robert La Follette Jr. after all. They recognize him as a Republican and put him on three Senate committees.

Harry Houdini’s new show opens at the 44th Street Theatre. The entire second act is devoted to exposing the ticks used by mediums. Some of the audience members are annoyed that he asked questions of them based on letters his assistant took from coats in the cloakroom.

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Today -100: December 14, 1925: His favorite

Headline of the Day -100:

Oops. 9 years old. “Rose, he said, had always been his favorite.” His less-favored children must be wondering what’s in store for them.

Incidentally, Rudyard Kipling has been sick, but is now on the mend. This has been worth something like a dozen news articles over the last couple of weeks. It’s always a little weird when the NYT mounts a death-watch. Kipling won’t actually die anytime soon.

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Today -100: December 13, 1925: Of cars, cavaliers, empires, and mosques

Yugoslav Prime Minister Nikola Pašić’s car runs over and kills a teacher. Later in the day, the acting foreign minister’s car also runs over a woman. Ice, they say, and definitely not some sort of sick competition.

Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot sets an execution date for William Cavalier, who was 14 when convicted of murdering his grandmother.

It is hinted that Mussolini might promote Italy to an empire rather than a mere kingdom in the new year. The new emperor would, of course, be the spineless Victor Emmanuel, not Moose, perhaps the reason this never came to pass.

A mosque is being built in Paris, more or less the first in mainland France. The Grande Mosquée de Paris will open next year in the 5th arrondissement. 

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Today -100: December 12, 1925: No additional punishment would act as a deterrent to those who would preach an erroneous doctrine of government

The League of Nations invites the US (and other non-members Germany and Russia) to join a committee to prepare for a disarmament conference. 

NY Gov. Al Smith pardons Benjamin Gitlow, the former Socialist state assemblyperson convicted of “criminal anarchy” in 1920 for stuff published in a newspaper of which he was business manager. Smith says he’s been “sufficiently punished for a political crime”* and in prison “has meekly submitted to the sovereign power of the State,” which I’d consider an insult if anyone said it about me. Smith says “no additional punishment would act as a deterrent to those who would preach an erroneous doctrine of Government.” Gitlow will run for governor next year as the Workers Party candidate. The Comintern will expel him from the Communist Party in 1929 as insufficiently radical and yadda yadda yadda, he’ll turn anti-Communist by the late ‘30s and write I Confess: The Truth About American Communism in 1940.

*I failed to notice the significance of this, but Gitlow will point out next week that Smith “admitted in his pardon that there is such a thing in this country as imprisonment for political offenses.”

In Prussia, Robert Grütte-Lehder of Gen. Ludendorff’s Nazi-adjacent German Völkisch Freedom Party (DVFP) is on trial for murdering Heinrich Dammers of that same group in 1923 for supposedly passing party secrets to the Communists. This is the first Berlin trial for the “Feme murders” (Fememorde – punishment murders) in which far-right groups cleaned house. c.30 officers and such are said to be awaiting similar trials. Grütte-Lehder, “resembling an east side gangster,” accuses DVFP party leaders and Reichstag members of inducing him to kill Dammers, giving him a letter – an actual letter – authorizing it.  (Update: I think it actually just tells him to establish order in the Stettin branch of the party, which Grütte-Lehder says amounts to the same thing.)

The Italian Chamber of Deputies passes Mussolini’s labor law abolishing all labor unions except Fascist “syndicates,” which he says are different from Socialist labor unions in that they are based on class collaboration. Strikes will be banned in favor of mandatory arbitration. The Duck tells the Chamber that this should be considered a war measure “because I consider the Italian nation in a permanent state of war.” “Even as controversies are not permitted at the front in wartime, so now we must realize the maximum national efficiency.” A NYT editorial gives this, um, illuminating analysis: “Italy’s new labor laws would indicate that the hen of dictatorship has been brooding over the eggs of radicalism and, oddly enough, has hatched out chickens shaped in the Fascist image.”

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