Today -100: March 18, 1926: Of leagues, gross immorality, and pygmies

The League of Nations Assembly fails to admit Germany to the League because of the whole fight about who gets to join the Council and in what order. Everybody’s blaming Brazil. The League will take this up again in the next session in five months.

Famous biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who will coin the word “clone,” at least in its modern sense, wins his appeal against his expulsion from the Cambridge University staff by the Sex Viri committee (If you are at work, do not google “sex viri”) for “gross immorality” because he was named as a respondent in the divorce case of Charlotte Franken, which some people seem to think is none of Cambridge’s business. He will marry Franken later in the year.

An expedition to Dutch New Guinea led by Berkeley Prof. Matthew Stirling begins next month. It’s looking for pygmies, as one does.

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Today -100: March 17, 1926: His death was a tremendous blow to me

The New York Assembly Judiciary Committee, dominated by Republicans,  kills Gov. Al Smith’s measures for a 4-year gubernatorial term, for reapportionment for both houses of the Legislature on the basis of – can you imagine it? – population. It does approve a referendum for a pay raise for the governor, whose current $10,000 a year is less than that of some of his appointees. The State Senate Judiciary Committee kills a proposal for a referendum to ask the US Congress to modify the Volstead act to permit the sale of light wines and beer. The Assembly’s Labor and Industries Committee kills Smith’s proposal for a 48-hour work week for women & children.

The first witness at the much-delayed Matteotti murder trial, Amerigo Dumini, leader of the Fascist death squad, admits to organizing the Socialist leader’s kidnapping, but claims Matteotti died of natural causes, as one does during a kidnapping: “Matteotti was not murdered, he died. His death was a tremendous blow to me.” Dumini says he couldn’t have been part of the actual killing because he was driving the car. Then why did you have bruises when you were arrested 2 days later? he is asked. He denies he had bruises only to be shown the report of the police doctor. Old war wounds and insect bites, he says. And what about all the blood on the car if Matty died of TB? It ain’t going well for Dumini. He is unable to substantiate his claim that Matteotti was involved in the 1924 murder of Fascist Nicola Bonservizi in France (which he wasn’t).

The Indianapolis City Council adopts an ordinance pushed by the White People’s Protective League for residential segregation by race.

The House of Representatives votes 48 to 2 to reject an amendment to the DC Appropriations Bill withholding the salary of any teacher who teaches evolution or “disrespect to the Bible, partisan politics or that ours is an inferior form of government.”

Headline of the Day -100:

“I can totally pull out in time,” Herbert Hoover says.

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Today -100: March 16, 1926: Kitty!

The Great Smoky Mountain Conservation Society sends Pres. Coolidge a wildcat as a, you know, pet. Instead, he’ll be sending it to the zoo.

The Italian government makes its first (?) use of the law allowing it to strip the citizenship of expats who criticize the Fascist regime, in this case the radical journalist Carlo Tresca, currently residing in New York.

Lady Vera Terrington, who was the 4th woman Member of Parliament (1923-4), is divorcing Harold, the 2nd Lord Terrington, for adultery. He says he will fight the suit.

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Today -100: March 15, 1926: If they don’t want them that’s their look-out

Capt. Frank Doudera, a famous hunter, is bringing two timber wolves he captured in Quebec to New York, intending to give one to Mayor Jimmy Walker and the other to Brooklyn Borough President Joseph Guider. This according to a telegram he sent the Canadian Pacific Railway, which informed the NYT. Do they WANT timber wolves, the intrepid reporter asks. “I don’t know,” but “if they don’t want them that’s their look-out.”

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Today -100: March 14, 1926: Of booze and bribes

An Anti-Saloon League delegation visits the White House, trying to get Coolidge to condemn the move in Congress to, um, water down the Volstead Act. Coolidge evidently tells them he doesn’t see any need to inject himself into the Prohibition discussion.

The US government, as I probably mentioned, is suing to cancel Harry Sinclair’s Teapot Dome oil lease. Wallace Abbott, secretary to former Interior Secretary Albert Fall, was supposed to testify about Sinclair’s bribing of Fall; instead, he commits suicide.

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Today -100: March 13, 1926: Of reasonable concessions, dining alone, fasts, and disarmaments

Germany rejects the compromise proposal that Poland join the League of Nations Council on a non-permanent basis at the same time as Germany joins both the League and the Council, with decisions on Spain and Brazil postponed. French PM Aristide Briand says they’ve reached “the extreme limit of concessions.” British Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain says there’s no point in further discussions: “We have made every reasonable concession, and if the Locarno plan fails now the plain fault will be that of Germany” (yes, it’s his brother Neville who made every unreasonable concession to Germany in 1938).

It’s generally agreed that if an agreement is not reached, the future of the League of Nations would be in doubt, and the already shaky governments of France and Germany, and possibly Britain, would fall.

Since Crown Prince Carol renounced the Romanian throne in January, the king and queen are barely speaking and no longer eat together. There is a plan afoot to allow him to return from exile as a private citizen. (The article offhandedly, after the fold, mentions that 1) there is an anti-Semitic student strike in Bucharest, 2) the Horthy regime is using it as an excuse to station troops there just when it’s trying to get the parliament to pass a new voting system modeled on Mussolini’s. Maybe put that shit ahead of the royal gossip).

Following the success of hunger artist “Jolly,” so many people have applied to sit in a glass booth and not eat that the Berlin chief of police bans any new professional fasters (grandfathering in those like Jolly who are currently mid-fast).

The Danish Folketing (Parliament) votes to mostly abolish the army and navy.

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Today -100: March 12, 1926: Like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist

Virginia’s State Senate has its first ever impeachment, that of Sen. Alfred C. Smith, after it’s discovered that he was convicted of forgery in South Carolina in 1913 and of getting his Virginia law licence fraudulently in 1914. During the impeachment debate, Smith accuses Sen. James Barron of doing the work of the Knights of Columbus. The senate removes him from office. In November he’ll be re-elected, unopposed (!) to serve the remainder of his term. He’ll be convicted of fraud, again, in 1938 and go to prison.

Socialist congresscritter Victor Berger lobbies the government to restore Eugene Debs’s civil rights. Attorney Gen. John Sargent tells him Debs would have to apply for a pardon personally. Berger says this Debs refuses to do because he asserts that he did nothing wrong: “This is like asking a Methodist to seek a pardon for being a Methodist.”

During a debate in the British Parliament on maintaining a Navy of 102,675 men, George Lansbury (grandfather of Angela) proposes reducing that by, oh, say, 100,000, saying the Navy is used for capitalist exploitation throughout the world. His motion loses 167 to 19.

Mississippi bans the teaching in state-supported schools that man “ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.”

Austrian Fascists are calling for restorations(s) of the Habsbugs (that was a typo, but I like it so I’m keeping it), but with Otto as king of Austria and other Habsbugs as kings of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia. I’m not sure how this would work with their other goal of Anschluß with Germany; presumably Germany would have to restore its own emperor or even all its royal families.

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Today -100: March 11, 1926: Of councils, beer, and engagements

Brazil threatens to veto Germany joining the League of Nations Council (which would stop it joining the League at all) if Brazil doesn’t also get a permanent seat on it (no South American country currently has a permanent seat). Other countries (Italy, Spain) might block German entry to the Council if other countries don’t come in at the same time, but Sweden is threatening to veto the entry to the Council of any other country than Germany. (Also, if Germany doesn’t join the League, the Locarno treaties don’t go into effect).

During a heated debate in the House on relaxing Prohibition, Emanuel Celler (D-NY) reads out George Washington’s recipe for beer.

Rudolph Valentino denies rumors spread by Pola Negri that they are engaged. She pulled this same stunt with Charlie Chaplin.

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Today -100: March 10, 1926: Of Of briands, bootleggers and hijackers, municipal housekeeping, and amaaaaazing stories

Aristide Briand succeeds himself as prime minister of France, the 9th time he’s held the job. He’ll also be foreign minister, so he’ll have to scurry to Geneva for the talks on German entry to the League of Nations. This cabinet is further to the right than the last. No one thinks it will last long.

Charles English, supervisor of recreation of the Chicago Board of Education, says Chicago boys no longer play cowboys and Indians, but bootleggers and hijackers. The girls, he says, imitate screen vamps.

Bertha Landes is elected mayor of Seattle, the first woman mayor of a major US city, although she was acting mayor while Edwin Brown was out of town at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. She fired the corrupt chief of police; Brown reinstated him when he returned. It’s Brown who she just defeated on a slogan of “municipal housekeeping.” (The NYT reports, incorrectly, that the voters also voted in the city-manager plan, which would have more or less abolished the position of mayor).

The magazine Amazing Stories’s first issue appears. The first magazine exclusively devoted to scientifiction, as Hugo Gernsback called it (he didn’t coin the term science fiction, but he did put it into widespread use a bit later, after scientifiction failed to catch on) (don’t know who it was who later came up with “sci-fi,” which Harlan Ellison, who despised the term, always pronounced skiffy).

Was it just reprints of 19th-century stories? No! Here’s an original story by a teenage author:

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Today -100: March 9, 1926: Well, journalism and permanent revolution

Leon Trotsky is now a professor at the Moscow School of Journalism in his copious free time.

German nationalists are complaining about American negroes appearing on the Berlin stage.

France’s current lack of a government may delay Germany’s entry into the League of Nations, since a decision has to be made first on whether Poland, Brazil, or Spain are also admitted to the LoN Council. Germany insists that it has to be part of that decision, so it should only be made after Germany becomes a League member.

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Today -100: March 8, 1926: Mr. Watson, come here, and tell me how tall the Woolworth Building is

For the 50th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (its patent, anyway), a wireless phone call is successfully made between New York’s AT&T offices and the British Post Office in London. Reporters talked with their trans-Atlantic counterparts, two minutes each. They chit-chat about night life and whether you can obtain liquor in New York (yes). A reporter from the Westminster Gazette asks how tall the Woolworth Building is, to settle a bet about whether it’s taller than the Eiffel Tower. There was a phone cribbage game. In other words, they ran out of stuff to say each other. The listeners on the NY side say the sound quality is equivalent to local service, those in London say it’s better. Trans-Atlantic telephone isn’t ready to go commercial yet because of intermittent static and because so many radio-heads have built sets that can listen in on calls.

The 36-year-old Charlie Chaplin is dyeing his graying hair.

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Today -100: March 7, 1926: Of arrest warrants, poles, fakers, and ears

The JP who issued arrest warrants for the Passaic chief of police and 2 patrolmen for beating strikers can’t find any cops willing to serve the warrants.

There will be as many as 10 Arctic expeditions this year.

Rep. W.D. Upshaw (D-Georgia) slaps Robert Choate, the Washington correspondent of The Boston Herald, for writing that in a congressional debate on Prohibition (Upshaw’s for it), he got so excited that he forgot to use his trademark crutches. The slap came after Upshaw complained that people would think he was a faker and Choate responded “And I think you are one.” He’s not the only one who thinks that.

Dr. Fritz Pfuffer, a Viennese ear doctor, says city noises are making people’s ears bigger. In a couple of generations, they’ll be “like a dachshund’s.” 

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Today -100: March 6, 1926: Of cathcarts, confidence, and centenarians

A Passaic, New Jersey justice of the peace issues an arrest warrant for Chief of Police Richard Zober and 2 patrolmen for clubbing textile strikers.

A federal judge rules on Vera, Countess Cathcart’s writ of habeas corpus, saying someone can’t be excluded because of something that was not a crime where they did it (adultery in South Africa in this case). She can now stay in the US as long as she wants. The government was forced to admit to every argument brought by her lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame & the ACLU; named after three mediocre presidents). It was attempting to thwart a habeas hearing until Hayes threatened to personally take her to Ellis Island and demand they lock her up so he can then demand they unlock her up.

The French Cabinet led by Aristide Briand loses a vote of confidence.

Reports inform Coolidge that the recent drop in the stock market didn’t affect the commodity markets and that business fundamentals are so strong that everything’s just fine.

Tick tick tick.

Salem, Massachusetts Mary Elizabeth Newhall will have her 100th birthday next week – guess they didn’t get ALL the witches. She’s been walking with crutches since she caught polio at 3. Her father was the town crier from 1842 to 1881, when the town abolished the post.

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Today -100: March 5, 1926: No right to fill a man’s skin with liquor

A coffee-house waiter in Budapest leaves a suicide note saying that the reasons for his suicide and the persons involved in it are explained by a crossword puzzle he has constructed. The police can’t solve it.

After the violent police attacks on textile factory strikers in Clifton & Passaic, New Jersey yesterday, they are now wearing Great War trench helmets and gas masks. Reporters, who after having $3,500 worth of camera equipment destroyed by the fuzz yesterday, are now taking pictures and newsreel footage from planes and armored cars (the  type banks use). But the police have dialed down their thuggery. Edward Moore, who claims to have invented a “centrifugal riot gun,” which he invented at the end of the war and can shoot 4,000 rounds per minute, helpfully offers it to Passaic.

Federal Judge J.C. Hutchison (Houston) condemns Prohibition agents buying liquor for informants in sting operations: “Prohibition agents have no right to fill a man’s skin with liquor just to make a case.”

The Lord Chamberlain, Britain’s theatrical censor, orders changes in Vera, Countess Cathcart’s play Ashes at the request of Lord Craven’s friends, because it’s a theatre roman à clef (if that’s the term I’m looking for) based on their affair. Following Lord Cromer’s orders, the play’s location has been changed from South Africa, the words “lover” and “mistress” deleted, and the name of the Lord Craven character changed from “Rayhaven.” There will be a New York production next month, which will not have these alterations (it will close after 8 performances).

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Today -100: March 4, 1926: Of strikes and nickel

The Passaic, New Jersey police used fire hoses on textile factory strikers a day ago and now, along with Clifton police, attack strikers with tear-gas bombs and clubs and motorcycles. To be fair, some of the children the motorcycle cops run down had hit them with snowballs. The cops make a special target of press photographers and newsreel cameramen, smashing their cameras (and hands).

In its largest day of trading ever, the markets tumble following the Interstate Commerce Commission’s rejection of the Nickel Plate merger.

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Today -100: March 3, 1926: Of Bimbas

Anthony Bimba is convicted of sedition, but not of blasphemy, the prosecution having downplayed the charge under that 300-year-old law. The judge expresses annoyance at the Lithuanian community of Brooklyn using the legal system to conduct its internal disputes, calling it “over-contentious.” He fines Bimba $100. Bimba’s conviction will be reversed on appeal. He will become a naturalized US citizen in 1927, but in 1963 the government will try to deport him, claiming he failed to mention the 1926 prosecution when he applied for citizenship; the government will eventually drop that case, which was probably initiated in retaliation for his refusal to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1957.

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Today -100: March 2, 1926: Watch out

The War Department turns down an offer by the Benrus Watch Co. (owned by three Jewish brothers who immigrated from, where else, Switzerland) to install – for free – a giant illuminated wristwatch on the Statue of Liberty. The War Dept (why is this their decision?) says a wristwatch would simply be too modern for the classical statue.

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Today -100: March 1, 1926: Of dirty businesses, the real cause of the crime wave, and what means the same thing as negro

Prince Aage of Denmark, who renounced his position as #1 in the royal succession and joined the Foreign Legion, as you do, says being a king is “a dirty business.” “Give me the army,” he says. Whenever the prince of Wales falls off a horse, “everybody in the the world laughs at it,” but when Aage falls off a horse in Morocco, “I just rub myself and that’s the end of it.” No comment.

William McDougall, professor of psychology and racist twaddle at Harvard, says crime in the US is caused by racial mingling, which erodes the traditions which preserve order.

A black man, Joseph Manning, is fined $30 for disorderly conduct. He approached a young woman eating breakfast in a Park Row restaurant, then dared to object when she told him, “Shut up, nigger.” The magistrate says, “There are too many of your kind in Harlem who want people to believe they are not negroes by taking offense when they are called negroes. Nigger means the same thing as negro.”

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Today -100: February 28, 1926: Of vindications, maids, and cruel and barbarous bedtimes

Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who ran for governor of Texas in 1924 allegedly to “vindicate” her husband, impeached former Gov. James R, announces that she’ll need a second term to finish that vindication. She wants the impeachment expunged from the record and says she wouldn’t be running again if that had happened. That’s quite a platform, especially since the state senate has already refused to do that. She says she will continue to be advised by her husband just like previous governors have been advised by their wives (I notice she never claims that she advised James when he was governor).

Mary Harrison, widow of Pres. Benjamin Harrison (by the way, she was the niece of his first wife), appears in court in Harlem to plead for mercy for her maid, who had stolen a bunch of her jewelry.

In Pittsburgh, the master (job title, not an S&M thing, probably) who reviews divorce cases and makes recommendations which the court usually rubber-stamps, agrees with Miriam Elpern that the 9:00 or 9:30 bedtime he imposed on her is cruel and barbarous.

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Today -100: February 27, 1926: Baby’s day out

Less than 3 weeks after being convicted of attacking a 12-year-old girl, black man Harry Butler is hanged in Georgetown, Delaware. Although only 100 or so spectators are allowed to observe the... entertainment (not counting those watching from the roofs of neighboring buildings), afterwards thousands are allowed to look at the body on the scaffold. “Many of the women carried babies, raising them to their shoulders to see the negro.” Before the execution, the crowd was singing, but the article does not list their songs.

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